Interviewer(s): S. Wiltz. Arnaudville, LA

Affiliation: University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Joseph W. Robin was born in 1937 in Breaux Bridge, where his family had cotton and heifers. After graduating high school there in 1955, he went to study agriculture for three months at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (SLI, now ULL). He worked for Southern Pacific for three or four months before going to work for Phillips 66 in 1957 as a deckhand and replacement engineer, servicing the Eugene Island area. In 1962 he went to work for Sewart Sea Craft. Over a period of six months he was off work, during which time he was ill; then in 1963 he went to work for Tidewater as a deckhand engineer; two years later he became a boat captain. While working for Tidewater he got his 100-, 300-, 500-, and 1600-ton boat licenses and his ocean endorsement. In 1992, the company named a boat after him, the "Joe Tide". For the year and a half before he retired in 1999, he worked as a safety man and helped to certify the company with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS).