As the hammering and clanging stops at Harland and Wolff, workers hold out hope for a buyer

The yellow cranes were nicknamed Samson and Goliath, soaring steel giants that defined Belfast’s skyline and symbolised Northern Ireland’s industrial might.

Hulking over the Harland and Wolff shipyard, each could lift loads weighing hundreds of tonnes, dangling them like playthings over thousands of workers below who hammered and clanged and welded – a thunderous, daily cacophony.

It was a moment of immense pride every time an ocean liner, tanker, ferry or navy vessel slid down the ramp into the waters of the River Lagan. A 1986 company history book was titled Shipbuilders to the World.

Profile Northern Ireland manufacturing Show Hide The state of Northern Ireland industry The collapse of Harland and Wolff is just the latest blow to manufacturing in Northern Ireland, under pressure from firms offering cheaper labour costs abroad and weak economic environment. Multiple factories have closed there in recent years, with fears of more to come if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. The manufacturing sector is disproportionately large in Northern Ireland compared with the rest of the UK. A study from Oxford Economics found it accounts for about a third of the economy, compared to only a tenth of the overall UK output. The same study suggests that the sector supports 214,000 jobs directly and indirectly, or a quarter of all employment. Much of Northern Ireland’s manufacturing – from linen to shipbuilding – has fallen prey to the same forces of globalisation faced by the rest of the UK. Added to that is the new threat of a no-deal Brexit. The government’s own forecasts suggest a no-deal Brexit could lead to a sharp rise in unemployment, with at least 40,000 jobs at risk, based on EU export exposure. Many of those jobs will be focused in manufacturing, heavily reliant on frictionless exports across the Irish border. Bombardier – the Canadian aerospace firm is looking to offload its Northern Irish business, the historic Short Brothers operation which employ 3,600 people. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bought a smaller part of the business in June.

Wrightbus – The maker of the new London Routemaster bus, ordered by Boris Johnson when he was mayor, is looking for a rescuer. Around 1,400 jobs, mainly in Ballymena, Co Antrim, are at stake.

Michelin – the French tyremaker closed its factory in Ballymena last year, with the loss of 860 jobs. It blamed a downturn in demand from European lorries since the financial crisis.

JTI Gallaher – The cigarette factory was another major Ballymena victim, closing its factory in 2014. The Japanese owners blamed falling demand for cigarettes in Europe, hitting the maker of the Silk Cut and Benson and Hedges brands. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA

Few seemed to notice or care that in the Old Testament Samson and Goliath came to bad ends: one betrayed, the other slain.

Their Belfast counterparts this week experienced their own twist of fortune. Harland and Wolff Heavy Industries, since 1861 the maker of some of the world’s most famous ships, including the Titanic, collapsed into administration. The two great cranes are now motionless; their fate, like that of the stricken company’s employees, uncertain.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gary Fleming, a shipfitter, at the deserted Harland and Wolff yard Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

“Forty-three years I worked here, now on to the scrap heap,” said Gary Fleming, 59, a fitter, as he wandered through a deserted shipyard. There was no need for a hard hat, no need to shout over the noise of machines. The only sound, besides the crunch of his boots, was from gulls circling overhead.

Several dozen colleagues were outside the gate mounting a protest to try to save the shipyard and their jobs. Goliath sported a banner: “Save our yard. Renationalise now!”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Titanic at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast Photograph: MGPhoto76/Alamy

The company ceased trading on Monday and job losses have started. In a statement on Friday, the administrators said some workers have been offered redundancy and have taken it. Others have been laid off until Friday 16 August but are not being paid because the yard has “insufficient funds to cover the current running costs of the business”. The lay-offs, they said, provide a few more days to look for a buyer.

They added: “A number of interested parties/potential bidders have come forward since our appointment and we are expediently following up on these inquiries in an effort to seek a viable commercial solution. This is our focus and we are working closely with interested parties and stakeholders with the aim of securing a positive outcome.”

The yard’s Norwegian owner, Dolphin Drilling, filed for bankruptcy in June and put the shipyard up for sale but received no viable offers, prompting the high court to appoint administrators.

At a stroke, centuries of shipbuilding appear to have ended.

A yard that once employed more than 30,000 workers looks set to become an industrial graveyard, transforming Samson and Goliath into monuments to decay. “The biggest tombstones in the world,” mourned the Belfast Telegraph.

The withering started decades ago.

After producing Olympic and Britannic liners at the turn of the 20th century and warships such as HMS Belfast during the second world war, the company struggled. Mass air travel eroded demand for ocean liners and Asian competitors built vessels cheaper.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Unused helmets at the entrance to Harland and Wolff. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

Harland and Wolff last built a ship in 2002. It relied on repairs of ships and rigs and construction of “foundation jackets” for offshore wind turbines to occupy a dwindling workforce – part of a wider decline of shipbuilding across the UK.

The workforce has shrivelled to only 123. They are not going down without a fight

The workforce has shrivelled to only 123. They are not going down without a fight. Successive governments shirked opportunities to revitalise British shipbuilding but Boris Johnson’s administration can partly remedy that by giving Harland and Wolff a lifeline, they say.

“We are staying here to make our presence known,” said Barry Reid, 50, a steelworker and GMB union representative at the protest outside the gate. “We want to try to shame people into buying the yard and the government into renationalising Harland and Wolff.”

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, echoed that call during a visit to the yard.

Reid is a fourth-generation employee – he said his great-grandfather worked on the Titanic – who like many of his colleagues knows no other job.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The launch of HMS Belfast from Harland and Wolff’s shipyard in March 1938. Photograph: Fox Photos/Getty Images

They fear vanishing into history – statistics and anecdotes for the guides who lead tourists around Titanic Belfast, a nearby attraction that recreates the shipyard’s glory days.

Susan Fitzgerald, an official with the union Unite, criticised Julian Smith, the Northern Ireland secretary of state, for referring to the workers in the past tense during a conference call.

She urged him to help stave off asset strippers and to find a buyer who could let the yard bid for commercial contracts worth tens of millions of pounds. “We’re going to hold his feet to the fire. We expect him to come back fully aware that this is a viable prospect.”

Workers may seek to punish the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), which has been accused of pusillanimity, by running candidates against the party’s Belfast MPs in the next election, Fitzgerald said.

The mood at the gate protest was more sombre than defiant. Workers were not occupying the site nor blocking access for administrators, said Reid, the GMB representative. “We’re not taking control.”

Steven McDowell, 57, a contractor, said he and others were eyeing jobs in England. “We have bills and mortgages.”

A rescue is possible but not probable, according to Graham Brownlow, an economics lecturer at Queen’s University. A big pension bill for former employees deters potential buyers and the shrunken workforce has limited political clout, he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Steven McDowell, a former contractor, outside Harland and Wolff. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

“The loss of 130 jobs, bad as it is for the people involved, will not have a big multiplier effect. It’s a blow in the sense that it brings an end to a very long history of shipbuilding – it’s about symbolism.”

The shipyard is one of the last manufacturing giants in east Belfast, a loyalist stronghold that also risks losing 3,600 jobs at Bombardier.

Conor Houston, a business consultant, said a burgeoning tech sector in the Titanic Quarter that abuts Harland and Wolff was creating new jobs. “Ensuring all have access to those opportunities is now essential.”

Fleming, the fitter, was dubious of reinvention. He had worked at the yard since the age of 16. “In here I have confidence, I can do fitting, rigging, you name it. Outside I don’t have confidence. Don’t ask me about computers or phones.”

He wondered if he would ever see Samson and Goliath swing back into life. In the yard Fleming had his own nickname: Heart Attack. “I always made sure the job was done and done right. I worked so hard they said I wouldn’t make it to 30. In the end they just called me Heart.”