The business Harland and Wolff was established during 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, and Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831. In 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
When Harland purchased Hickson's shipyard, he then made his assistant Wolff a partner in the business. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mostly 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 company a successful venture. Among his famous ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by using iron for the upper wodden decks. What's more, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
Harland and Wolff eventually experienced competitive pressures in regards to building ships. They sought to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They decided to concentrate more on structural design and engineering and less on building ships. The company also diversified into the fields of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for more projects that 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 comprise the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. In the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their first venture into the civil engineering sector happened.
Today, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships which was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. During 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.