During 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831, established the company. In the year 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
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 mostly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships that were built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Among his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Also, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to focus less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The business also diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for additional projects that 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 consist of the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector happened.
Today, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during the year 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.