In 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831, formed the business. During the year 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought 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 business. Gustav Wolff was Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg's nephew. He has invested mainly in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which were built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the company a successful venture. Amongst his well-known suggestions was increasing the ship's overall strength 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 flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The company eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to concentrate more on structural engineering and design and less on building ships. The company also diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair and competing for more projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff constructing a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges consist of the restoration of both the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Foyle Bridge, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector occurred.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six near identical Point class sealift ships which was constructed to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. During the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.