The company Harland and Wolff was established in the year 1861, by Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, born within Hamburg in 1834, together with Mr. Edward James Harland born during 1831. In 1858 the general manager during the time, Harland, bought the small shipyard located on Queen's Island. He bought 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 company. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff was the nephew of Gustav Schwabe of Hamburg. He has invested mainly in the Bibby Line. The first 3 ships which were built by the brand new shipyard were for that line. By being inventive, Harland made the business a successful venture. Amongst his well-known ideas was increasing the overall strength of the ship by using iron for the upper wodden decks. As well, he was able to increase the capacity of the ship by giving the hulls a flatter bottom and a square cross section.
The business eventually faced increasing pressures in the shipbuilding industry causing them to broaden their portfolio and shift their focus. They chose to focus less on shipbuilding and more on structural design and engineering. The company even diversified into the areas of offshore construction projects, ship repair as well as competing for more projects that had to do with construction and metal engineering.
Harland and Wolff had other interests, like a series of bridges to be built in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain. These bridges consist of the restoration of the James Joyce Bridge and Dublin's Ha'penny 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 project of Harland and Wolff to date. This was amongst six near identical Point class sealift ships which was built to be used by the Ministry of Defense. In the year 2003, the ship was launched, after being built under license from Flensburger, Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, German shipbuilders.