The business Harland and Wolff was established during the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
When Harland purchased 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 first 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 ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Additionally, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship 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 shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The business even diversified into the fields of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for additional 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 consist of the restoration of both 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 occurred.
Today, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was built to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. During the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.