During 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during the year 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831, established the business. During 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
Harland at one time bought 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 first 3 ships that were constructed by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. One of his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. What's more, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The company even diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for additional projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, such as a series of bridges to be built 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. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector occurred.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six almost 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 Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.