The company Harland and Wolff was formed in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. During 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Harland at one time bought 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 constructed were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Amongst his famous suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Additionally, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The company eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to concentrate less on building ships and more on structural engineering and design. The company also diversified into the fields of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as competing for more 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 comprise the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their first foray into the civil engineering sector took place.
To date, 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 built for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.