The company Harland and Wolff was established during the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831. During the year 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He bought 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 initial 3 ships that were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. One of his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. As well, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a squarer cross section and a flatter bottom.
Harland and Wolff were eventually faced with competitive pressures in regards to shipbuilding. They sought to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to focus less on shipbuilding and more on structural design and engineering. The company also diversified into the fields of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for additional projects that had to do with metal engineering or construction.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, such as a series of bridges to be built in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges include the restoration of Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, with the building of the Foyle Bridge, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector happened.
To date, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was one of six near identical Point class sealift ships that was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. During the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, shipbuilders from Germany.