During the year 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, formed the company. During 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Once Harland bought 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 initial 3 ships that were constructed by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Among his famous suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by using 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 shipbuilding. They sought to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to concentrate more on structural design and engineering and less on building ships. The business 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 first foray into the civil engineering sector happened 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 almost identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed to be used by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in the year 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.