The company Harland and Wolff was established in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, purchased the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Harland at one time bought Hickson's shipyard and made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that the brand new shipyard constructed were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Amongst his well-known ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Moreover, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually experienced 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 areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects 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 constructed in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges include the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their initial foray 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 almost identical Point class sealift ships that was built to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. In 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.