The business Harland and Wolff was established in 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831. During the year 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
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 heavily in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships that the brand new shipyard made were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Amongst his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. What's more, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on shipbuilding. The business also diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, such as a series of bridges to be constructed in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector occurred.
Today, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was built to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.