During the year 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, established the business. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Harland at one time bought 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 mostly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships which the brand new shipyard made were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the company a successful venture. Among his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Also, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The business also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for additional projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges consist of the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their first foray into the civil engineering sector took place.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed to be used by the Ministry of Defense. In 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.