The company Harland and Wolff was established during the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831. During the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
When 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 that were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful venture. Amongst his famous suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. As well, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The business eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus more on structural design and engineering and less on shipbuilding. The company even diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as 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 comprise the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed 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.