The company Harland and Wolff was established during the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. During the year 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, purchased the small shipyard situated 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 initial 3 ships which the brand new shipyard built were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the company a successful venture. One of his well-known suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. In addition, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The business eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to focus more on structural engineering and design and less on shipbuilding. The company also 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 include the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their first venture into the civil engineering sector happened.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships which was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. In 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.