During 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, formed the company. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
When Harland bought Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. One of his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Furthermore, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
Harland and Wolff were eventually faced with competitive pressures in regards to shipbuilding. They sought to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus less on building ships and more on structural engineering and design. The company even diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be constructed in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges consist of the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.