The company Harland and Wolff was formed in 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831. In the year 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
When Harland purchased Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mainly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that the brand new shipyard constructed were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. 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 company eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to concentrate less on shipbuilding 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 additional projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges 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. During the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
Today, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in 2003, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.