The business Harland and Wolff was formed during the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. During 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
Once 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 mostly 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. Among his well-known ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. Furthermore, 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 shipbuilding. 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 company even diversified into the fields 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 building a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their first venture into the civil engineering sector happened.
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. During the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.