During 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, established the company. During the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, purchased the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
When Harland bought Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mainly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships that were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Among his well-known ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. In addition, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on shipbuilding. The company also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for additional projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be constructed in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges consist of the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector happened with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
Today, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during the year 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.