In the year 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831, formed the business. During the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
When Harland bought Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mostly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which the brand new shipyard constructed were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Among his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. Additionally, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
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 concentrate more on structural design and engineering and less on building ships. The company also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as competing for more projects which 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 comprise the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their first foray into the civil engineering sector occurred.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in the year 2003, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.