6 Alec Wilson on 



out that the i)lace seemed to be suitable for building ships. As 

 early as 1636, a contemporary political tract mentions that a ship 

 of 150 tons, the ^'' Eagle h Wing" had been built in Belfast for 

 the purpose of canying perKsecuted Presbyterians to America. In 

 1663 many of the small vessels trading to the port are said to 

 have been built in Belfast or the neighbourhood. In 1699 the 

 ''^ Loyal Chai-les," a vessel of 250 tons, was launched. It is a 

 little difficult to imagine why a Belfast merchant of 1699 should 

 have chosen this name for his ship! Were there rich Jacobites in 

 Belfast then — or was some Whig trying to make out that the 

 Stewart party had become loyal to King William III. "? The 

 question can never be answered. 



During the 18th Century there seems usually to have been 

 euough work on hands to keep at any rate a few ship-carpenters 

 going, although these may peihaps have been repairing rather 

 than constructing : the point is of small importance, for at best, 

 the boats must have been tiny even for those days, and any 

 demand must have been purely local. 



Afresh start was however made in 1791, when Mr. William 

 liitchie-, sometimes called the " Father of Belfast Shipbuilding," 

 came over from Saltcoats, in Scotland, with his brother, ten 

 workmen, and the necessary tools and materials for setting up a 

 small shipyard. The first graving dock on the Lagan was com- 

 pleted by him exactly one year before the Act of Union was 

 proclaimed, Jan. 1st, 1800. The Belfast Corporation have two 

 rare prints showing what Ritchie's shipyard looked like in 1812. 



The first Belfast-built steamship, a wooden one, was launched 

 as early as 1824, and the first iron vessel in 1838. 



Although these details are now almost antiquarian in their 

 interest, and although these early efforts no doubt supplied a 

 nucleus of training and tradition which must have been of 

 value later on, yet the modern industry seems to owe little 

 to these pioneers. The truth is, that the Belfast we know 

 did not begin to come into existence until mankind had 

 invented the powerloom and the dredger. The beginning of the 



