The business Harland and Wolff was established during 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, bought the small shipyard 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 initial 3 ships which were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Amongst his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. Also, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
Harland and Wolff were eventually faced with competitive pressures in regards to building ships. They sought to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on shipbuilding. The business even diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more projects that had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges include the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, their first venture into the civil engineering sector took place with the construction 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 to be used by the Ministry of Defense. In the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.