In the year 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831, established the company. During 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased 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 first 3 ships which the brand new shipyard constructed were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Among his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Also, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
Harland and Wolff were eventually faced with competitive pressures in regards to building ships. They sought to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus less on shipbuilding and more on structural design and engineering. The business also diversified into the fields of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for more 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 consist of the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector took place with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships that was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during the year 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.