page_title: Huckins Yacht Corporation
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Huckins Yacht Corporation / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Maiden voyage of the Fairform Flyer. Frank Huckins, founder of Huckins Yacht Corporation, is seated on the right with a pipe.
context_page_description: Huckins Yacht Corporation is one of the oldest boat builders in the United States.
  The company is located on the Ortega River in Jacksonville, Florida, and is run by its third-generation owners, Cindy and Buddy Purcell. Huckins manufactures custom yachts ranging from 40 to 90 feet that combine classic design and traditional workmanship with modern technology and amenities. It has built a total of 457 yachts during its 80 years of operation, crafting vessels one at a time.
  Huckins Yacht Corporation hosts an annual Rendezvous which provides an opportunity for Huckins owners to gather together and share their boating experiences.
context_section_description: Frank Pembroke Huckins came from a family that had been in the lumber business in Maine ever since his grandfather Pembroke Somerset Huckins, and his great-grandfather John Huckins, of Bangor, founded the P. S. Huckins Company in 1854.
  The Boston concern dealt in ship timbers and planking during the years prior to the rise of iron- and then steel-hulled ships. After the Civil War, wooden shipbuilding waned and a new demand arose for factory timbers. The Huckins company adapted itself to the new field with a stock of suitable southern yellow pine timber and plank.
  Frank Pembroke Huckins, the fourth generation scion, left Harvard college in his junior year and went to work in the "Marine Gasolene (sic) Engine Business". In December, 1908, he went to work for P.S. Huckins Company, where he became the tally-man and surveyor in the company's lumber yard. All of the yellow pine timber sold by the Huckins family business was shipped in schooners from Jacksonville and Fernandina to East Boston. Huckins was made assistant treasurer of the company in 1911, and president in 1912.
  Huckins sold the P.S. Huckins Company in 1923 and moved to Jacksonville in 1924. In 1926 he became a partner in the Drayer–Warren Company, an architectural millwork firm supplying materials for the construction boom in Florida, and the name was changed to the Warren–Huckins Company. In 1928, Warren–Huckins was reincorporated as the Huckins Yacht Corporation by Huckins, Harold l. Perrin of Boston, and Henry Skinner Baldwin of Springfield. A slogan used by the former company, "Florida Fairform Finish", inspired the new firm's yacht brand name, "Fairform Flyer".
  Huckins hired Florida boat builder Herschel B. Ward as foreman, and construction of the Fairform Flyer Hull No. 1 began in April, 1928. Around this time, his partner Ling Warren decided that he wanted out of the yacht building business, and Huckins bought him out. The Fairform Flyer 42’ Express Cruiser was launched in July 1928, captained by Huckins himself on its maiden voyage from Fernandina, Florida to New York City. It was sold in the autumn for $15,000 to David M. Goodrich of the B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company, who became a repeat customer. A company booth at the 1929 New York Boat Show took six orders for yachts, and to expedite the work Huckins used modular construction.
  The onset of the Great Depression motivated Huckins to build smaller boat designs and to seek more efficient construction methods for larger vessels, such as mounting engines on I-beams supported by the engine room bulkheads, and using belt driven V-drive propulsion systems.
  In 1943 the U.S. Navy commissioned Huckins Yacht Corporation to build two squadrons of PT boats, a total of 18 boats for service during World War II.
  John F. Kennedy was in command of a Huckins-built vessel, PT-101, when he served as an instructor at the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center in Melville, Rhode Island,. He also delivered PT boats from Melville, Rhode Island to Jacksonville and then to the breaking-in center in Miami.
  In 1969, Huckins built the largest sportfishing yacht in the United States, measuring 80 feet in length.
  In 1976, Huckins Yacht Corporation constructed the largest motor yacht in the United States, built with an Airex-cored fiberglass hull.
  In 1986, Huckins built a specialty 78-foot Sport Cruising yacht, which included wide doors and an elevator, designed for an owner confined to a wheel chair.
  The oldest existing boat built by Huckins Yacht Corporation, the 1931 Offshore 48’ Avocette III, was honored in July 2008 by the Museum of Yachting.
  Original boat designs are still available at Huckins Yacht Corporation as it continues to build fine custom yachts.  The complete history of the company can be found in the book, Huckins: The Living Legacy, by Andreé Conrad and Anders Jonsson.
caption: Maiden voyage of the Fairform Flyer. Frank Huckins, founder of Huckins Yacht Corporation, is seated on the right with a pipe.
exif: {"Image DateTime": "2011:11:17 17:56:36", "Image ExifOffset": "58", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB"}