The business Harland and Wolff was established during the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831. During 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Harland at one time purchased Hickson's shipyard and made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested mostly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that were constructed by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful venture. Among his famous ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Furthermore, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The company also diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more 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. During the 1980s, their first venture into the civil engineering sector occurred with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. In 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.