During 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831, formed the company. During 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
Harland at one time purchased Hickson's shipyard and made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. One of his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. In addition, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The company eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to focus less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The business also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for additional projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges include the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their first venture into the civil engineering sector occurred.
Today, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships which was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. During the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.