The shipyard that built the Titanic is on the verge of bankruptcy

"There has been a series of board meetings and the result is that directors will be appointed during the day," said a spokesman for Harland and Wolff. The management of the company is the local form of protection against bankruptcy.

The shipyard was put on sale last year by the Norwegian parent company Dolphin Drilling, which went bankrupt in June. The Norwegian administrator of Dolphin Drilling did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters on Monday.

Harland and Wolff, which opened in 1861, employed more than 30,000 people during its glory during the Second World War, and remain a powerful symbol of Belfast's past as the industrial engine of the British Empire. Currently, it employs only 130 people, engineers and marine specialists.

Putting society under bankruptcy protection puts jobs in jeopardy, but that will not necessarily lead to closure of the shipyard. Part of its land has been sold and houses a museum dedicated to the Titanic, the largest ship of its time that sank on its maiden voyage of 1912 causing the deaths of 1,500 people.

Many in Belfast consider the shipyard, whose labor force has for many years been almost exclusively Protestant, as an emblem of the bitter sectarian divisions of Northern Ireland.

The city is still recovering from three decades of violence between Irish Catholic nationalists and pro-British trade unionists who have killed 3,600 people.

By Ian Graham of Reuters