During the year 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, established the business. During 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought 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 built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. Among his famous ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Furthermore, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
Harland and Wolff eventually experienced competitive pressures in regards to building ships. They sought to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The business also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as competing for additional projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector happened with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, 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 during 2003, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.