In the year 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, established the company. In the year 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, 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 mostly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which were built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful venture. Among his well-known suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Also, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
Harland and Wolff eventually experienced competitive pressures in regards to shipbuilding. They sought to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to concentrate more on structural design and engineering and less on shipbuilding. The company also diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and 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 the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges include the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their first 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 almost identical Point class sealift ships that was built to be used by the Ministry of Defense. In the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.