The company Harland and Wolff was formed in 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831. In the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
Once Harland bought Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. 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 business a successful undertaking. Among his famous ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. What's more, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to concentrate 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 building a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their first venture into the civil engineering sector occurred.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was one of six near identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed to be used by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.