In the year 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, established the business. During 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Harland at one time bought 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 which were built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. Amongst his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship 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 business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to concentrate less on building ships and more on structural engineering and design. The business also diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for more projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges consist of the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector took place.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was one of six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during the year 2003, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.