In the year 1861, the company Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in the year 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831, formed the company. In the year 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard situated on Queen's Island. He bought the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
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 that the brand new shipyard built were for that line. By being innovative, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Among his famous ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. What's more, he was able to increase the ship's capacity by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually experienced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding sector causing them to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They decided to concentrate less on shipbuilding and more on structural design and engineering. The company also diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects as well as competing for additional projects that 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 comprise the restoration of both Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge and the James Joyce Bridge. During the 1980s, their first foray into the civil engineering sector occurred with the construction of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was one of six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was constructed to be utilized by the Ministry of Defense. The ship was launched during the year 2003, after being constructed under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.