In the year 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, established the company. In the year 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He purchased 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 company. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which were built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. One of his well-known ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Furthermore, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The company eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to concentrate more on structural design and engineering and less on building ships. The business also diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for additional projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be built in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. 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.