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The unsinkable Luther Blount

Blount's reluctance to yield control raises questions about the future

Luther Blount is telling the story of his Rhode Island shipyard - how he founded it on land his grandfather once used as a dump for oyster shells. He built that original sliver into a seven-acre complex that is now the second-largest piece of waterfront land in Warren, Rhode Island. The story still has some distance to go - Blount's shipyard is 50 years old, after all, and he is 83 - when Ron Baer, the shipyard superintendent, bursts into Blount's office, with Bill Jordan, the yard's young naval architect, on his heels. "Got a minute?" Baer asks.

Blount, sitting in the swivel chair behind his ancient gray steel desk, nods. "Out in the yard," Baer says, and, by now, Blount is on his feet. Within seconds, he is outside and astride the three-speed bicycle he uses to get around the yard, on his way to the four-story corrugated-steel building that is the heart of the shipyard.

Inside, a 161-foot dinner boat, Pegasus, is taking shape. With three passenger decks and an elevator, the boat will seat 600 people. It is costing its New York owners $5 million even before it is fitted out for dining, and they have big plans for it on New Year's Eve, when they expect celebrants to pay top dollar to welcome the year 2000 in New York Harbor. They want delivery in November.

The clang of hammers on steel and the hiss of welding torches make it hard to hear. Baer points upward and moves close to Blount to explain: The curve of the hull where it meets the main deck is not quite right. It's the sort of thing you might never notice, but when you do spot it, your eyes are drawn back to it like your tongue to a cold sore. It appears that a crossbeam for a forward bulkhead was cut an inch or two short. Blount climbs to a catwalk for a closer look.

There's no question that the bulkhead must be ripped open and the problem fixed. But Pegasus is on a tight schedule, and taking time to do this will be a setback. It may not matter, if there are no other delays, but if there are, overtime costs could quickly eat away at profits.

Blount gives the OK to go ahead. Aloud, he worries only about any scars the work might leave, finally concluding, "When it's done, no one will be able to see anything."

In another company, such a clear-cut, almost preordained decision might not require going to the top. But Blount knows no other way to run things. He has spent half a century at it, building his enterprise - it includes a small-ship cruise line specializing in unusual destinations - into an $18-million-a-year business. His employees and friends accuse him of micromanaging, and he admits that his style is old-fashioned. But it doesn't matter: Every detail, from planning a hull design to hiring a towel supplier for the cruise line's three 100-passenger ships, goes through the boss. Blount has tried delegating authority, but it never seems to work. One such episode led to a years-long falling-out with his oldest daughter after a dispute about how to keep the shipyard's accounts.

The shipyard is at the core of all that Blount represents, although it is the least profitable of his businesses. This is the place where it all began, where his inborn inventiveness comes into play, and where there is no question that he is in charge. Most of all, it is where Blount has stamped his personality on steel, with the no-nonsense design of his vessels. No sleek sailing boats these: Blount builds sturdy boats meant for hard work - tugboats, barges, ferries, fishing boats, sightseeing boats, dinner boats, and small cruise ships. If you've gone to Martha's Vineyard on the Island Queen, crossed Lake Champlain on the Governor George D. Aiken, dined aboard the Spirit of Boston, or taken a 16-day cruise to Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala on Blount's own Grande Caribe, you've been on a Blount-built boat.

And five decades in the business have only made Blount more sure of himself and of his creativity. Two weeks after confronting the time-consuming bulkhead problem aboard the Pegasus, Blount himself introduces the ingredients for another possible delay.

"I was thinking in bed last night," he begins. He has seen another challenge he can't resist, related to the construction of the superstructure on the Pegasus. The vessel's three decks will each have 9 feet of headroom, more than on most of Blount's boats. Blount foresees problems when his welders begin hoisting half-ton steel support beams for the ceiling into place at this height. The process is cumbersome, ties up use of an overhead crane, and carries some extra safety risks. He has formulated a plan to speed up this job and, he believes, make it safer.

Putting it into effect, though, means taking a day and a half to make some tall steel tripods to support the beams. And once these are done, progress will slow for a while as the workers get used to them. The yard foremen doubt that the change will make the job go faster, and they argue that further delay has financial risks. But Blount won't listen. "They'll see, they'll see," he says.

A few days later, the tripods are done and in use, and Keith Enos, a foreman, acknowledges that they work and may have improved safety. But do they speed up work? "Let me put it this way," he says. "I haven't seen it yet." But from the start, Enos knew Blount would win. "He's the boss. The boss says do it, you do it."

Blount's autocratic ways may frustrate many around him, but they have gained him renown in his industry and in his home state of Rhode Island.

And his persona reaches beyond his businesses. He is also an environmentalist, an adventurer, a horticulturist, an amateur genealogist, and a big-game hunter. Visitors to his small office must confront, almost nose to nose, a mounted moose head with an antler spread of 3 feet. He is also an inventor with 22 patents in his name, including innovative features built into his boats; a reversible ship propeller; a water-conserving shipboard toilet; and a prosthetic device to deal with male impotence. Dozens of awards hang on his office walls, including honorary degrees from the University of Rhode Island, Bryant College, and his alma mater, Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. He is, not surprisingly, a millionaire, probably several times over. Friends, family, and shipyard colleagues say that impressive as Blount's accomplishments are, they do not record the most important ingredient of his success: Blount's bulldog belief in his own abilities. "I am a guy who can think his way out of the worst situation that you can possibly think of," he says.

His daughter Nancy, who oversees daily operations at the cruise line but complains that she lacks authority, has a different way of putting it: "He runs his companies by the seat of his pants."

Blount even lives on the shipyard property, in a plainly furnished apartment on the top floor of a two-story frame house. The downstairs apartment is rented to four yard employees. The view from Blount's bedroom window is of the gritty shipyard itself and the docks where the cruise ships tie up. But in his living room, where he entertains clients and friends, a floor-to-ceiling glass door, 8 feet wide, opens onto a deck with a view across the Warren River and Narragansett Bay to Prudence Island, eight miles away.

Monday mornings are especially tough for those who work at Blount Marine Corp. "Dad can be deadly when he has time to think," Nancy Blount explains, and her father commonly "spends the whole weekend thinking up ideas to try, thinking about what went wrong last week, and making lists of things to do," she says. But even if this style can exasperate Blount's employees, customers often find it appealing.

A year ago, when the Shoreline Sightseeing Co. of Chicago chose Blount to build Star of Chicago, a 233-passenger boat that carries tourists up and down the Chicago River, it was mostly because the Rhode Island yard promised delivery by Memorial Day. But it wasn't long before Matthew Collopy, Shoreline's vice president and the son of its owner, was won over by Blount's persistent presence alongside his underlings during negotiations over design and price. Often, Collopy says, he found Blount arguing on his side, recommending ways that would cut costs and improve operations. For example, Blount urged that the wheelhouse, where the captain sits, be kept small, with space for only one person.

"Luther pointed out that passengers on the top deck like to be right up in front, and this makes more room for them there," says Collopy. And with no room inside to hang out, "the crew would have to be working."

Blount Marine finished Star of Chicago, the first of four vessels built at the shipyard this year, on schedule. Ten days after the boat arrived in Chicago, Collopy was back in Rhode Island, happy with his new boatbuilder and discussing another order.

Doing things his way has cost Blount, however. Some at the shipyard, requesting anonymity, say Blount's willingness to do business on a handshake has lost him money when clients later demanded features that were never promised in writing. And in one memorable instance that he admits was his own fault, Blount's overconfidence nearly killed him. Then in his 60s, he was cutting down an aging willow tree outside his office, doing the job himself because he thought an employee wasn't doing it right. The tree fell on Blount and shattered his leg, pinning him face down on the ground. He was in a Providence hospital for three months.

Blount's reluctance to yield control raises questions about what will happen, when he is gone, to Blount Marine Corp., the American Canadian Caribbean Line cruise-ship operation, and the third leg of his business, Bay Queen Cruises, which operates a day-excursion boat. Bob Dahmer, Blount's son-in-law, who runs daily operations at Bay Queen Cruises, says that when it comes to succession, Blount "doesn't want to deal with it."

As boys, growing up in the 1920s just three blocks from where the shipyard is now, Luther Blount and his younger brother, Nelson, had a running bet over who would be first to become a millionaire. Such a goal was natural in their entrepreneurial family. Their father was the leading ice dealer in neighboring Barrington, and they lived with their grandfather, who had founded a shellfish business that he had already turned over to their Uncle Byron.

Nelson won the bet, at age 29. When an old injury kept him out of World War II, he made a fortune selling ice and oysters to military bases. After the war, he landed a lucrative contract on behalf of his uncle's Blount Seafood Co. to supply clams to the Campbell Soup Co. Now run by Nelson's oldest son, Ted, Blount Seafood still sells to Campbell. Nelson retired early to enjoy his wealth, indulging a boyhood passion for steam trains by founding Steamtown USA, a railroad museum, and pouring energy and money into religious causes. He was also an avid pilot, and in 1967 he died when his single-engine plane crashed in New Hampshire.

If Nelson Blount was a super salesman, Luther had a knack for things mechanical, as well as a streak of wanderlust. When he was 17, he quit school for a year to sail to South America with an English sailor who charged him $250 to join the crew. He turned out to be the only crew member, and they never got past Long Island, where a winter storm tore the boat from its moorings at the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club and drove it ashore. The owner vanished. Blount called his parents to come get him.

He finished high school and went on to Wentworth Institute to study mechanical design. After graduation in 1937, he went home to work for his Uncle Byron, where he had a front-row seat to watch the hurricane of 1938 demolish Warren's waterfront and wash away the oyster beds in Narragansett Bay.

With the shellfish business in chaos, Blount took a job at a thread factory in Connecticut. There, he invented a tough thread used for medical sutures and in the garment industry. He soon soured on working for others, though, when the company rewarded him with a $1 payment for the rights to his patent and a pep talk about how his good work might someday lead to a headquarters job in New York. Blount says the experience taught him only that to get by, you had to "kowtow to the bigwigs." But he was newly married, so he stayed on the job.

After hours, he also ran a small dairy farm and a sawmill and built a few houses. "I guess I was practicing to be an entrepreneur," he says. World War II ultimately called, and he was drafted into the Army in 1945. But with the end of the war near, he served only eight months and was home by Christmas.

Then his brother called. To make the Campbell Soup deal, Nelson needed a way to produce concentrated clam broth. Luther designed a condenser system to do it, and Nelson promised him, says Luther, that "if I ever wanted to go into business myself, he would help me."

That day came in 1949. Now back working for his uncle, Luther was hauling discarded oyster and clam shells out into Narragansett Bay to be shoveled overboard. To lighten the work, he devised a barge with a platform hinged like a hopper that could dump the shells at the pull of a lever. The idea impressed other oyster dealers, and soon Blount had an order for a barge like it, three times bigger.

Fred Richardson, a boyhood friend of both brothers who took over Blount Seafood after Nelson's death, says it was then that he understood what motivated Luther Blount - the joy of being challenged. "He's a very clever guy. First, he finds out in Connecticut that he's an inventor, then he learns he is good at designing machinery; now, he finds out he's a pretty good boat builder. ... Pretty soon there isn't anything in the place that he can't do, the designing, the welding, everything. And he is always thinking, always doing something - and when you are doing something, you start getting other thoughts as well."

Along with a stream of new ideas about how to build things, those thoughts included a renewed desire to run his own show. So, with Nelson's help in arranging financing, Luther bought some tools and leased a small piece of land alongside Blount Seafood to begin his shipyard. Luther Blount was 32 years old.

On a bright summer morning, some 90 travelers are pulling into Blount Marine's gravel parking lot, ready to board the American Canadian Caribbean Line's newest ship, Grande Mariner, at the pier immediately behind Luther Blount's house. After lunch, they will be setting off on a 16-day vacation voyage to Florida via the Intracoastal Waterway, for which they have paid about $2,500 each. Their mood is as warm as the day.

Many are repeat ACCL customers. Most are retired and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere these ships offer. There is no dressing for dinner, no "captain's table," no hair salon, no swimming pool, no shuffleboard - not even a bar. This is a BYOB boat. Setups and ice are provided, but passengers mix their own drinks.

What they are guaranteed on any of the two dozen voyages in the ACCL catalog is an unusual itinerary. Buoyant and broad in beam, the Grande Mariner, the Grande Caribe, and the Niagara Prince can navigate in less than 7 feet of water, which means they can travel rivers and canals or dock in small towns that other ships don't visit. They travel on the Erie Canal and into the Great Lakes; down the St. Lawrence River to the Saguenay River fjord of eastern Quebec; among the islands in the Panama Canal; and into the brackish fingers of Venezuela's Orinoco River delta. Each ship has a ramp built into its bow - another Blount invention - that can be lowered like the ramp of a landing craft so passengers can walk out onto a sandy beach or step onto shore where no dock exists.

The cruise line boards almost 5,000 passengers each year and has gross revenues of nearly $10 million. Blount likens the line to "the goose that laid the golden egg," because its profits offset losses at the shipyard during lean years. Not bad for a business that began on a whim, when Blount realized during the 1960s that his shipyard was getting a lot of repeat orders for sightseeing boats and passenger ferries.

"It took me a long time, but I finally figured out that the people buying my boats were making more money than I was," Blount says. Within weeks, he was building the Canyon Flyer, his first ship specifically for cruising, with bunks for 20 passengers. Its first voyage, in 1966, was to Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. Larger boats soon followed - the 48-passenger Mount Hope, the 60-passenger New Shoreham, and eight more since.

Along with their bow ramps, Blount's ships have retractable wheelhouses so they can fit beneath low bridges as they travel on rivers and canals. Only once, Blount says, has this feature failed him, when heavy rains raised the water level in the Erie Canal. The Mount Hope, even with its wheelhouse down, got stuck under a railroad bridge as a freight train began to cross. "Ka-wum, ka-wum, ka-wum, ka-wum, ka-wum," Blount chants, imitating the sound of the train's wheels. "The top deck was covered with rust flakes." He got out of this fix by reversing the bilge pump and taking on water so the vessel would ride an inch deeper in the water.

A more serious business problem these days is that the line's voyages attract mostly retirees. The average age of ACCL passengers is 70. Many are over 80, and very few are under 60. And half of the passengers are repeat customers, three times the cruise-industry average. All this undercuts efforts to lure a younger crowd. "Our customers are all getting old and dying," Nancy Blount says. And her father admits that this is one situation he hasn't yet been able to think his way out of.

If the cruise line is the capstone of Blount's business life, his personal pride is his 240-acre retreat on Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay. As in his mainland home, much of the furniture in his two-story island house is worn and dated. The carpet inside the front door tells much about the owner - it is Astroturf, to help remove mud from shoes.

On this property, he delights in growing apples and peaches and plums and walnuts on trees he has nurtured from seedlings. Blueberries grow inside wire cages, where the deer can't eat them, and melons ripen in a fenced garden.

Of all the pleasures he has found there, though, Blount considers the finest his efforts to grow oysters in the tidal flow of Jenny's Creek, a saltwater stream that transects the island and crosses his property.

For nearly a century, until the hurricane of 1938, the bay teemed with oysters. Biologists say many of the oysters not lost to the force of that storm were killed by the change in water chemistry that followed the torrent. Several projects attempting to restore this population had only limited success.

In 1977, Blount decided to try a different tack, using the oscillating tidal flow through Jenny's Creek as his incubator. He dug a small pond at one end of the creek, and in it he placed a total of 2 million juvenile oyster spat, gathered from small colonies around the bay. After a year, some of those oysters had grown to a half-inch in diameter and were washing out of the creek and forming their own natural colonies in the bay. For two more years, he repeated this experiment with similar results. Altogether, he estimates, his project spawned 4 million oysters.

No effort was made to keep track of what happened until 1995, when shellfishermen digging quahogs also began bringing oysters in for sale. About 5,000 pounds of oysters were sold to dealers that year. In 1996, as word spread, the harvest exploded to 1 million pounds, according to state data, and it hit that level again in 1997. Data for 1998 are incomplete, but it appears the harvest fell sharply, perhaps from overfishing.

As compelling a story as Blount tells, biologists say (and he agrees) that there is no scientific evidence that his work had anything to do with this resurgence. Art Ganz, a Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management biologist, says that other factors that might be responsible include a three- to five-degree rise in water temperature in the bay in recent years.

Still, Ganz says, "It certainly makes sense that Luther's oysters had something to do with this." And Joseph DeAlteris, a University of Rhode Island aquaculture specialist, adds: "If nothing else, he has kept interest in oysters alive."

Leaving his property after showing a visitor around, Blount is unusually quiet. He closes and locks the wooden gate, climbs into a car to drive to the ferry landing, but then looks back. He speaks, softly: "This is one of the most revered things I own." And then for the rest of the ride he is quiet again.

Most people who are Blount's age, having done so well, would rather be passengers on cruise ships than building and operating them. He admits, in a moment of candor, that he is tired of having to "go out and show people how things ought to be done," and says he sometimes feels that "I can't do it anymore."

Thinking his way out of the travails of old age could be his biggest challenge so far. "Dad didn't plan his life," Nancy Blount remarks. "He just let things happen. Now he doesn't want to do it all."

Fearing the prospect of having to live in a nursing home, Blount had a wing built onto his house that includes a second bedroom upstairs in case he needs a full-time companion. He also set up a nonprofit foundation to manage his Prudence Island property for public use and research. "I am going to take as much money as I can to fund the foundation," he says. "I want to keep that creek going as a hatchery."

But when pressed about the businesses, Blount is contradictory and vague: "I think either my kids or my grandkids will take them over, or someone will buy them and take them over."

Once, in the 1980s, it appeared that a business succession plan was taking shape. There was no such plan at the seafood company when his brother died, and the turmoil afterward prompted the adoption of a plan under which a third generation of Blounts is being groomed. At Blount Marine, Luther made Nancy Blount vice president of the cruise line; Bob Dahmer, his son-in-law, vice president of Bay Queen Cruises; and his oldest daughter, Marcia Lisker, vice president of the shipyard.

The scheme lost steam, though, when Lisker quit after the blowup over accounting practices. Baer, the yard superintendent, now is vice president of Blount Marine, and Blount's children say they no longer harbor any expectations about their roles in future management or any inheritance when their father dies.

Blount's friends say his situation is complicated by the fact that he has held such a tight rein for so long that he has trouble envisioning his companies without him. Earlier this year, he passed up an invitation to visit Europe to meet with a prospective customer, because he felt the businesses would suffer while he was gone.

Blount equates retirement with imminent death. "Once a guy quits, he doesn't last two, three more years," he says.

And, besides, he has more to do: He'd like to build a lightweight, twin-hull cruise ship using a design he has been developing for several years. He wants to extend his oyster experiments to soft-shell clams. And he has talked about adding a Blount-style cruise of Cuba's smaller waterways to his offerings.

"I don't think he ever sees himself as retiring," his lawyer, Patrick Gasparo, says. "He is 83 years old and still has day-to-day control of everything." Gasparo says it has not been easy trying to persuade Blount to develop a solid succession plan. Still, he's optimistic about Blount's legacy: "I think that the hallmark of his career is that these businesses will continue."