It was capable of receiving three vessels of 200 tons each! In 1807 a vessel of 400 tons burthen was launched from Mr.Ritchie's shipyard, when a great crowd of people assembled to witness the launching of "so large a ship"-- far more than now assemble to see a 3000-tonner of the White Star Line leave the slips and enter the water! The shipbuilding trade has been one of the most rapidly developed, especially of late years.

In 1805 the number of vessels frequenting the port was 840; whereas in 1883 the number had been increased to 7508, with about a million and a-half of tonnage; while the gross value of the exports from Belfast exceeded twenty millions sterling annually.
In 1819 the first steamboat of 100 tons was used to tug the vessels up the windings of the Lough, which it did at the rate of three miles an hour, to the astonishment of everybody.

Seven years later, the steamboat Rob Roy was put on between Glasgow and Belfast.

But these vessels had been built in Scotland.

It was not until 1826 that the first steamboat, the chieftain, was built in Belfast, by the same William Ritchie.