In 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, established the business. During 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, purchased the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
When Harland purchased Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mostly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships which were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. One of his well-known ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Furthermore, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
Harland and Wolff were eventually faced with competitive pressures in regards to shipbuilding. They sought to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on shipbuilding. The business even diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for additional projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their first venture into the civil engineering sector took place with the construction 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 used by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in 2003, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.