Neptune's Needle

Industrialist and shipbuilder.

Higgins transported lumber for his new enterprise, Higgins Lumber and Export Company (formed in 1922), with a small fleet of sailing ships and built a repair yard to service his ships. By 1926 he was manufacturing boats as his primary business. Indeed, by 1931 Higgins Lumber and Export was defunct, a year after the formation of Higgins Industries, which focused on the manufacture and sale of a variety of boats. The same year he formed the new enterprise, one of his boats, And How III, beat the record of ninety hours for the run from New Orleans to St. Louis that had stood for more than fifty years. In 1931 Higgins's Dixie Greyhound lowered the record to seventy-two hours.

Oil drillers and lumbermen used Higgins's motorboats, tugs, and barges; his speed boats were used both by rum-runners and by their Coast Guard pursuers. The most innovative of the boats was the Eureka, a shallow-craft vessel whose propeller and shaft were housed in a semitunnel to protect it from submerged obstacles. The boat was fast, durable, and maneuverable and could operate in less than a foot of water. Higgins adapted the Eureka into various forms of landing craft for wartime use, the most significant of which featured a ramp that replaced the rounded bow. This design allowed the craft to unload personnel or vehicles in shallow water.

Both the navy and the marines tested Higgins's boats in 1938, and he received his first navy contract the same year. In 1940 his 36-foot Eureka outperformed an entry by the navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair, resulting in a contract for 335 boats. Higgins caught the attention of military brass the following year, when the navy asked him to begin designing an experimental tank carrier. When Marine Corps and navy officials arrived at Higgins's place of business in New Orleans a couple of days later they were shown a completed 45-foot boat rather than just the drawings they had expected to see. The boat had been designed, built, and launched in sixty-one hours. Higgins received an immediate contract for fifty of the tank carriers. With war raging in Europe and fears of possible conflict in the Pacific, Higgins soon found his steadiest customers in the armed forces.

During the war Higgins Industries built torpedo boats, patrol boats, and other small craft. Most important, though, were his various amphibious boats, which saw action in North Africa, Europe, and the South Pacific. More than 1,500 Higgins landing craft participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

The market for merchant shipbuilding dried up after the Second World War. The American government contributed to producers' difficulties by putting surplus army and navy boats on the market. Higgins returned to building commercial craft and pleasure boats and dabbled in the production of housing materials. He was innovative in design and in his willingness to try new mass-production methods. Throughout his career, his boats were tremendous examples of form following function. His enterprises, however, which had taken off as a consequence of increased government demand for boats, declined as quickly as they had risen.

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Compiler

Peter Richards