During 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831, formed the business. In the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He purchased 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 mostly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Amongst his well-known suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. What's more, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
Harland and Wolff eventually experienced competitive pressures in regards to shipbuilding. They sought to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to focus more on structural design and engineering and less on building ships. The business also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as competing for additional 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 both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their first foray into the civil engineering sector occurred.
Today, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was built to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. In 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.