Tourists who still decide to visit Belfast by ferry will be struck first of all by its setting.

They will glide up the great sea inlet of Belfast Lough and find it surrounded on all sides by high hills.

The first signs of the city are not office blocks or church spires, of which there are many. They are two vast yellow cranes.

It’s not surprising in a place preoccupied with religion that they’re named locally after Old Testament giants, Samson and Goliath.

Samson is 106 metres high, or 348 feet if you’re Jacob Rees-Mogg. Goliath is a little shorter, at 96 metres or 316 feet. That makes them both taller than Dixon’s chimney in Carlisle, which stands at 88 metres.

All over Belfast they’re visible above the streets and houses and among other tall structures. Most people see them every day.

When you’re close enough their function is revealed, with the letters H&W.

Edward Harland and Gustav Wolff founded their shipyard in 1861 and it has dominated Belfast ever since – economically, architecturally and culturally.

Many other British cities had their shipyards, but none were ever as busy as Harland and Wolff.

Within 50 years it was building more ocean liners than anywhere else in the world.

It held the record for ship production during World War Two, providing 140 warships and 123 merchant ships, as well as more than 500 tanks.

That’s why the Luftwaffe bombed Belfast to bits, killing 1,000 people – and catching the Government completely by surprise. Nobody imagined that Hitler had even heard of Belfast.

Yet the firm survived the upheavals not just of two world wars, but the partition of Ireland, the Troubles and the sinking of its most famous creation, the Titanic.

At one point around 35,000 people worked there, although the workforce has dropped over the years.

Now the remainder look set to lose their jobs. Harland and Wolff has gone into administration.

I blame governments, and not just this one. UK shipbuilding has been allowed to slide and now 90 per cent of the world’s trade is transported by merchant ships built in China, Japan and South Korea.

It’s a symptom of a general lack of investment or interest in manufacturing and the notion we could all work in service industries.

We no longer make things in Britain at anywhere near the scale that we used to. There are still innovative high-tech manufacturers in Cumbria and elsewhere – but much of what’s left is about to be thrown away by Brexit.

Somehow I never thought it would close, as it had been rescued before. The firm was nationalised in 1975. In 1989 it returned to private ownership through a management-employee buyout, backed by the Norwegian industrialist Fred Olsen.

And in recent years it has seemed busy, which was always pleasing. Work centred around refurbishing oil rigs and building offshore wind turbines – and was apparently plentiful.

Unions hope that the company could be renationalised but there’s little prospect of that from a hard-right prime minister who doesn’t care about Northern Ireland anyway.

So the workers will be wondering what will happen to their livelihoods. Those who aren’t directly affected are wondering what will happen to the cranes.

Samson and Goliath aren’t listed buildings. If property developers bought the shipyard site they would probably want rid of them.

My hope is that they’d face such an outcry that they’d have to preserve them.

Maybe other uses could be found for them. Given their height they offer fantastic views. Surely a shop at the very top offering posh coffee could prove popular.

And the absence of the shipyard shouldn’t mean the removal of the cranes. Peter Dixon’s cotton mill has long since closed, but its chimney is still standing and much admired.

Even unpopular structures like Carlisle Civic Centre come to be cherished eventually. The Eiffel Tower was loathed at first by many Parisians.

One of its enemies was the writer Guy de Maupassant, who used to have his lunch at the restaurant there – because, he pointed out, it was the only place in Paris where you couldn’t see it.

Now Paris would be unimaginable without it.

For the same reason Carlisle needs to keep its castle and its chimney. Belfast needs its giants.