In 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831, formed the business. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager during the time, purchased 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 mainly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships which the brand new shipyard built were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. Amongst his well-known ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. Furthermore, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The business even diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for additional projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be built in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges include the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector took place with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched in the year 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.