During 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, established the company. In 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He bought the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
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 made were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Amongst his well-known suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. Moreover, he was able to increase the ship's capacity 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 shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to focus less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The business also diversified into the fields of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for more projects which had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges consist of 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 took place.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships that was built to be used by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.