During 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, formed the business. During the year 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Once 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 first 3 ships which the brand new shipyard made were for that line. By being innovative, 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. In addition, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
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 less on building ships and more on structural engineering and design. The company also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as competing for additional projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their first foray into the civil engineering sector took place.
Today, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.