During 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was formed. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831, formed the company. During the year 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
Harland at one time bought 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 mostly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships that the brand new shipyard made were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the company a successful venture. One of his famous ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by using iron for the upper wodden decks. Furthermore, he was able to increase the ship's capacity 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 focus less on shipbuilding and more on structural design and engineering. The business also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for more projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges comprise the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their first venture into the civil engineering sector occurred with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was built to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. In the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.