During 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831, formed the business. In 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Harland at one time purchased Hickson's shipyard and made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which were constructed by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Among his famous suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by using iron for the upper wodden decks. What's more, 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 were eventually faced with competitive pressures in regards to building ships. They sought to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The company also diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for more projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
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 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 construction of the Foyle Bridge.
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 built for use by the Ministry of Defense. In the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.