The company Harland and Wolff was established in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831. In 1858 Harland, who was the general manager at the time, purchased 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 mostly 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 undertaking. One of his famous ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. Additionally, 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 shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to focus more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The company even diversified into the fields of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as 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 the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges include the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector occurred.
To date, 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. The ship was launched during 2003, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.