The company Harland and Wolff was established in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831. In the year 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
When Harland purchased 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 heavily in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships which the brand new shipyard made were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. One of his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Moreover, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
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 focus more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The business even diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for more projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed to be used by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during the year 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.