In 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, established the company. During 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
When Harland purchased Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. 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 constructed by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. One of his well-known ideas 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 ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural design and engineering. The company also diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair and 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 Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges include the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During 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 amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in the year 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.