During the year 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, formed the company. In 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard 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 mainly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that were built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the company a successful venture. One of his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. In addition, 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 shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The business even diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges comprise the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was amongst six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.