During 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, established the business. In the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Once 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 heavily in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships which the brand new shipyard built were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Among his well-known suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. Additionally, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
Harland and Wolff eventually experienced competitive pressures in regards to building ships. They sought to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The company even diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges include the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector took place 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 that was constructed to be used by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in 2003, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.