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