During the year 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during the year 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born during 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.
Harland at one time purchased Hickson's shipyard and made his assistant Wolff a partner in the company. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested heavily in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships that were built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. One of his well-known 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 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 chose to concentrate more on structural design and engineering and less on building ships. The business even diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and 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 include the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector happened.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was one of six almost identical Point class sealift ships that 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.