In 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, formed the company. During 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, purchased the small shipyard situated 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 mainly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships that were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful venture. One of his well-known suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. 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 shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The company even diversified into the fields of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as competing for additional projects which 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 the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector happened with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships that was built to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.