During 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in the year 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831, established the business. During 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased 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 mostly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that the brand new shipyard built were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Amongst his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. As well, he was able to increase the ship's capacity 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 shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The company even diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be built 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 venture into the civil engineering sector occurred with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
Today, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships which 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.