The business Harland and Wolff was formed in 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg in the year 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in the year 1831. During the year 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from his employer, Richard Hickson.
Once 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 mostly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Among his well-known suggestions was increasing the overall strength of the ship by utilizing iron for the upper wodden decks. What's more, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship 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 concentrate less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The business also 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.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be built in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges include the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, their initial foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
To date, the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff was the MV Anvil Point. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed 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.