The business Harland and Wolff was established in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, purchased the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
When Harland bought 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 were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Amongst his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. Furthermore, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
The company eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose 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 more projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be constructed in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges consist of the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, their first venture into the civil engineering sector took place with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships that was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.