In 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, established the company. During 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Harland at one time purchased Hickson's shipyard and made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested mainly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which the brand new shipyard made were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. One of his famous ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Moreover, he was able to increase the ship's capacity 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 decided to focus more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The company also diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as 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 include the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector happened.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.