During the year 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831, formed the company. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Harland at one time purchased Hickson's shipyard and made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested mostly 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 suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship 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 flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The company eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to focus less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The company 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, such as a series of bridges to be built in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges consist of the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector happened with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
Today, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed to be used by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.