In the year 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg during 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born in 1831, established the business. In 1858 the general manager at the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased 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 heavily in the Bibby Line. The initial 3 ships which were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the company a successful venture. Amongst his well-known ideas was increasing the ship's overall strength by replacing the upper wooden decks with iron ones. What's more, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship 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 focus less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The company even diversified into the areas of ship repair, offshore construction projects and competing for additional projects which had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be constructed in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges comprise 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 venture into the civil engineering sector took place.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was among six almost identical Point class sealift ships that was built for use by the Ministry of Defense. In 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from German shipbuilders Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft.