The company Harland and Wolff was formed in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831. In 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought 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 mostly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships which the brand new shipyard constructed were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Amongst his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. What's more, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The business eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to focus less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The business also diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for more projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges consist of the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, their first venture 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 amongst six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.