The company Harland and Wolff was formed in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831. During the year 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He bought 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 business. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested heavily 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 venture. Amongst his well-known ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Additionally, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The business even diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
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 comprise the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector occurred with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was amongst six near 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.