The company Harland and Wolff was formed in 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831. In the year 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
When Harland purchased 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 constructed were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. Among his famous ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. As well, 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 experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural engineering and design. The business even diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for additional projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be built in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their first foray into the civil engineering sector happened.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed for use by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during 2003, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.