Morgan Manufacturing – Henry Luhrs Sea Skiffs, Inc.

In the summer of 2008, I had the personal thrill of receiving a phone call from Mr. John Luhrs.  Mr. Luhrs and his brother Warren, were third-generation boat builders and the founders of the Luhrs Marine Group which, until it was acquired, designed and built a broad spectrum of absolutely magnificent boats.  They also spent part of their childhood down the street from where I grew up in Morgan albeit a number of years before I was in the picture.

The Luhrs family was at one point possibly, thus far, the most commercially successful family to be associated with Morgan, NJ.

Mr. Luhrs was absolutely wonderful to speak with and very generously allowed me to call him and ask about his recollections.  His father was the legendary Henry Luhrs who, in little old Morgan, became the Henry Ford of boat building when by the 1960’s he figured out how to mass-produce Jersey Sea Skiff boats in a fashion John and his business partner and brother, Warren, said they had never equaled afterward.

The Luhrs family had been in the boat business for well over 180 years at the time of the 2010 call.  The grandfather of Henry Luhrs was also named Henry Luhrs.  This Henry Luhrs launched (a nautical term as well) a marine chandlery business in New York City in the 1830s and ultimately ended up owning shares in twenty-two different types of ocean-going vessels, i.e., barks, brigs, and schooners.  Of the barks, Henry was the principal owner of the one named for his wife Sophia R. Luhrs.

One hundred years after the original Henry Luhrs established his boating businesses, Henry Luhrs the grandson came to Morgan, NJ sometime in the early 1930s.  This second Henry, the one that is so well known now, set up a company by the name of Morgan Yacht Basin on the northwest shore of Cheesequake Creek right next to the New York & Long Branch Railroad and bridge.  The site was bisected by Keyport Road/Main Street and previously contained a restaurant and a dancing hall.  My late mother told me our Morgan neighbors, Hazel and Jasper Johnson, used to go dancing at this dance hall in the 1920s/1930s!  John Luhrs said Keyport Road/Main Street was also known as Route 4 and went right through the Luhrs facility until the current Route 35 drawbridge was completed in the early 1940s.

As told by John Luhrs, “Dad was renting the property from Mr. Robert E. Lee Morgan. [Yes, it is believed that Mr. Morgan was named after the Confederate General.]  One day during the Depression, I was with him when he met with Mr. Morgan.  Mr. Morgan told my Dad that he thought my Dad had paid enough rent and that he was going to sign the property over to him.  He gave my Dad the property on a handshake!  Mr. Morgan was a decent guy.  Had a big farm in Marlboro which was a stud farm for cows.  It was a lovely farm.  The barn was for his prized bulls. The doors of the barn were all varnished.”

“Morgan Yacht Basin,” Mr. Luhrs continued, “did mostly boat repairs.  New York/Sandy Hook pilots. Commercial work. Dad built a few custom boats, too.  They had a railway on a ramp that hauled out a lot of commercial boats or pilot boats. If they had an emergency, they knew it would get fixed right away.  At the time there were two boat ramp railways but subsequently, the one to the east was covered over.  I still know where the covered over one is located.”

During World War II, Henry Luhrs and his company continued repairing boats and installed ice sheathing on the bows of Coast Guard boats.  According to John Luhrs, “The paperwork requirements were virtually non-existent in those days.  If the Coast Guard needed to bring a boat in to get serviced, all they needed to do was to show up and it would get fixed.  Now there are a lot of formalities.”

One of those World War II US Coast Guard boats which would go to the Morgan Yacht Basin for service or repairs was a converted private vessel with hull number CGR-1122 (see photo).  “CGR” stood for “Coast Guard Reserve” and was a designation typically assigned to boats less than 100 feet long.  This boat was crewed by my father, Verne, Sr. who was stationed on Staten Island until he shipped out to the Pacific Theater in December 1944.

Following the war, Mr. Luhrs built 27-foot fishing boats but a turning point came in 1948 when he started producing a type of custom-built pleasure craft, at affordable prices, known as clinker-built or lapstrake.  In the days before fiberglass boats, of which Henry Luhrs was an early pioneer, this was a prevalent type of boat hull design.  In fact, the design goes all the way back to the days of the Vikings – if not earlier.  Instead of the smooth curvature which is seen on modern fiberglass boats, the hull of a lapstrake boat consists of a series of planks that overlap each other.  The Luhrs Flying Bridge Sea-Skiffs seen in the photo advertisements contained in this post are examples of clinker-built or lapstrake boats.

The following is from the Hunter Marine biography of Henry’s youngest son Warren Luhrs who, with brother John, also jumped into the pleasure boat industry: “The sea skiff is a class of boat that has been very popular, owing to its seaworthiness. It features a sharp bow, which reduces pounding in surf or choppy seas, and a hull whose forward section is rounded below the waterline to increase stability in rough water or a following sea. Such skiffs can either be smooth sided or of a lapstrake construction.  Henry Luhrs was both designer and engineer, and his progressive new models exhibited his talent for innovation. He successfully changed the line of the bow from straight to curved at a time when the industry trend was a straight square effect, and he is believed to be the first designer-builder to popularize a small boat with a fly bridge.”

The post-war economic booms allowed for average people to be able to acquire their own boats.  With the desire to serve the market place and inspired by mass-produced automobile manufacturing methodologies, by the 1960s Henry Luhrs Sea Skiffs was producing in excess of 1,200 boats per year.  In any given week, they built 18 boats – an average of over 3 per day – of various sizes with each selling for $2,000 to $4,000 each.  Considering the small size of the Morgan facility, that was quite an accomplishment.  Per John, Henry was criticized but respected by his competition because they built a few boats a year while Henry was building over three a day.

Henry Luhrs Sea Skiffs, along with the Ulrichsen Boat Company based in Marlboro, NJ which Henry acquired in 1960, were both sold in 1965 when Henry got an offer too good to pass up.  The acquiring company was the Fortune 500 conglomerate Bangor Punta Corporation.  Bangor Punta Corporation was a complex organization which had its origins with two companies which merged in 1964.  The Bangor & Aroostock Corporation was a Maine railroad company which primarily hauled potatoes and lumber.  Model railroaders would know them best for their red, white and blue boxcars.  Punta Alegre Sugar Corporation produced sugar in Cuba in the days before the Fidel Castro lead overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista government in 1959.  The Cuban Revolution resulted in a $54,000,000 loss for Punta Alegre which, somehow under US tax laws, was able to be used to acquire other companies.  The conglomerated Bangor Punta Corporation collected a number of other name brand companies such as Smith & Wesson (firearms), Piper Aircraft, and other boat building companies.  They were not as successful in acquiring Harley Davidson.

After the acquisition, John Luhrs stayed with the company as a manager until 1969 including one terrible morning.  Around 2 A.M. in the early morning hours of February 22, 1968, a fire started at the Morgan facility resulting in the burning of several buildings and six boats. 

John DiPoalo (founder and owner of the Morgan Lumber Company) was Fire Chief of Morgan Hose & Chemical Company #1 which fought the fire.  Mr. DiPoalo was also close friends with Henry Luhrs having supplied lumber to him over the years to all of the Luhrs businesses in Morgan, Marlboro and Millville, NJ as well as in Florida.

The firehouse, still located in the same place as it has been for nearly 100 years, was just up the street.  Trains running on the railroad tracks adjacent to the boat factory, were delayed for several hours as the fire hoses needed to run across the railroad tracks.  Following the $400,000 fire, the Luhrs Boat Company shifted production to the Marlboro NJ facility in order to meet the orders.

After his retirement, one of Henry Luhrs’ passions was beautifully painting ships with unbelievable detail and clarity such as this one of the Italian Navy ship, Amerigo Vespucci.

In 1969 John and his brother Warren started a new phase in the Luhrs family boating legacy by purchasing a small boat building company in Toms River, NJ by the name of Silverton Sea Skiffs.  Warren later founded Hunter Marine in 1973 and Mainship in 1978.

After the sale of Bangor Punta to Lear Siegler, John and Warren were able to reacquire the Luhrs name in 1985.  Here is a consolidation of what happened afterward from the website marinesource.com:

The family finally reclaimed the Luhrs name in 1985 and began production under it in 1986. A new production facility was opened in St. Augustine, Florida in 1987 to accommodate the brand’s growth and the demand for Luhrs boats. The St. Augustine facility has since been expanded several times and a new facility in Midway, GA was added in 1999 to help meet demand. The Luhrs Corporation, now employee owned, continues to serve the needs of sportfisherman by building some of the best mid-size fishing boats in the world.

April 30, 2012: Morgan Industries Corp., the new parent company of the Luhrs Marine Group, filed voluntary petitions to reorganize under Chapter 11 in bankruptcy court in New Jersey. Morgan Industries Corp. was created as an umbrella group so that all nine companies, Silverton Marine Corp., Mainship Corp., Luhrs Corp., Hunter Marine Corp. and five additional subsidiaries, could be bundled into one complex case action and proceedings could move along at a much quicker pace. The move made it possible for Morgan to hire one attorney for all of the filing companies instead of nine separate ones, which would have eaten up money, says Peterson, who was named Morgan’s chief restructuring officer and treasurer.

The last time I spoke with Mr. Luhrs in 2008/2009, he had mentioned that the then global financial situation caused people to stop buying boats and that it wasn’t looking good.  Sadly, he was correct.  At the height of his and Warren’s success, they had the following boat building companies:

Luhrs Marine Group – which was composed of:

• Hunter Marine Corporation
• Luhrs Corporation
• Mainship Corporation
• Silverton Marine Corporation

Warren Luhrs passed away after suffering an unexpected heart attack on September 18, 2017 at the age of 69.  At the time he was still an avid and expert sailor.  He was survived by his wife and eight children.

Today, the former site of Henry Luhrs Sea Skiff, Inc. is occupied by Zuback’s Heavy Metal Marine, Inc.  Of the numerous boat manufacturing companies founded by the Luhrs family, it appears only the Hunter brand remains in business as part of Marlow-Hunter, LLC which acquired it in August 2012.

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Posted on April 1, 2020 with portions originally posted on September 1, 2009 and January 10, 2010.