Arrol Gantry

The Belfast gantry was commissioned by the White Star Line and Harland and Wolff and built by Sir William Arrol & Co. in 1908. Before the Gantry, the northern end of the Queen's Island shipyard had four building slips, each with gantry cranes above them. The cranes formed three crosswise gantries over each slip, with jib cranes working from each upright. To make space for the two new slips, three of the old slips were given up. No 1 slip remained and continued in use, with its original gantries, and was used for building liners such as the . The two new slips were numbered 2 & 3. There were nine slips at Queen's Island before this, eight afterwards but the other remained numbered as 5...9…

The gantry dominated the skyline of Belfast and became an important local landmark, as Samson and Goliath would do again fifty years later. The poet Louis MacNeice's autobiographical poem Carrickfergus describes his birthplace: <poem> "I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams:" </poem> This is somewhat anachronistic, as MacNeice was born just before the construction of the gantry and his family had moved to nearby Carrickfergus before Olympic's launch.