During 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, formed the business. During the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, purchased the small shipyard located 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 business. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mainly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which the brand new shipyard built were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Amongst his well-known suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. In addition, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate less on building ships and more on structural engineering and design. The business even diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for additional projects that had to do with metal engineering or construction.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be built in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. 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 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 constructed to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.