The company Harland and Wolff was formed in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831. During 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
When Harland purchased Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that the brand new shipyard constructed were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the company a successful undertaking. Among his famous ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Additionally, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The company eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to concentrate less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The company even diversified into the areas 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 the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their first venture into the civil engineering sector took place with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during 2003, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.