The company Harland and Wolff was established in 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. In 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.
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 innovative, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. One of his famous suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. Additionally, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural design and engineering. The company even diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for additional projects that had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges consist of the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector happened with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
Today, the last shipbuilding job 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. The ship was launched in 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.