During 1861, the business Harland and Wolff was established. Mr. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born in Hamburg during 1834, along with Mr. Edward James Harland born during the year 1831, established the business. In 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, purchased the small shipyard on Queen's Island. He purchased the property from Robert Hickson, who was his employer.
Once Harland bought 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 mainly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships that were made by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful undertaking. Amongst his well-known 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 capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
Harland and Wolff were eventually faced with competitive pressures in regards to building ships. They sought to shift their focus and broaden their portfolio. They chose to focus less on building ships and more on structural design and engineering. The business even diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for more projects that had to do with metal engineering or construction.
These other interests led to Harland and Wolff building a series of bridges in Britain and in the Republic of Ireland. These bridges include the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. During the 1980s, their initial venture into the civil engineering sector took place with the building of the Foyle Bridge.
The MV Anvil Point was the last shipbuilding job of Harland and Wolff to date. This was amongst six almost 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 built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.