The business Harland and Wolff was formed in 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831. During 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, bought 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 company. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mostly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which the brand new shipyard made were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Among his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Moreover, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The company eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose 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 and competing for additional projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be constructed in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges include the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, their first venture into the civil engineering sector took place with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
Today, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was one of six near identical Point class sealift ships which was built to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.