In 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, formed the business. During 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
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 first 3 ships which the brand new shipyard made were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Amongst his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Additionally, 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 decided to focus less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The company even diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for more projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be constructed in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges include the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector took place with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships that was built 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.