In 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831, formed the company. In the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, purchased the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
Harland at one time purchased Hickson's shipyard and made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful venture. Amongst his well-known ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Also, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The company eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them 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 also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for more projects that had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was one of six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.