The company Harland and Wolff was formed in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. In the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, purchased the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought 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 mainly 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 business a successful undertaking. Amongst his famous ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Additionally, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The company eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The company even diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for additional projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be constructed in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges include the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector took place with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
Today, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was one of six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.