In 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, formed the business. During 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard situated 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 business. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships that the brand new shipyard built were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Among his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Additionally, 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 chose to focus more on structural design and engineering and less on shipbuilding. The company even diversified into the fields of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as competing for additional projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
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 both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector happened with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. In 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.