The company Harland and Wolff was formed in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. In the year 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
When Harland purchased Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mainly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships that were constructed by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. One of his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. In addition, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
Harland and Wolff were eventually faced with competitive pressures in regards to building ships. They sought to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on shipbuilding. The company even diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for additional projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges consist of the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector took place.
To date, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six near 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, shipbuilders from Germany.