During 1861, the company 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 business. During the year 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He purchased 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 mainly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships which were constructed by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Amongst his famous ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. In addition, 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 shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The company also diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for additional projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges consist of the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector happened with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was built to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.