Interviewer(s): Jason Theriot

Affiliation: University of Houston

Tom Kelly was a long-time boat builder. He was vice-president of operations at Seward Seacraft in Morgan City in the early 1970s. He owned and operated his owned companies, mostly for boat repair. He was also a commercial fisherman and served on the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Commission. Kelly grew up in Shell Oil's Black Bayou community and learned at a very young age (5 years old) how to operate and maintain boats through his father, who ran boats for Shell in the marsh. He learned how to weld and repair boats and trailers in Vinton High School. He started at Consolidated Shipyard in Orange, TX in the 1950s building barges. After military service, he transferred to Morgan City to run Shell's boat repair yard. In 1966, he was hired as a supervisor for Seward Seacraft, aluminum crew boat builders in Morgan City. He eventually became vice-president of operations. When Seward Seacraft closed its doors in 1974, Kelly opened his own business, and then started a boat repair yard next to Gulf Craft, Inc in Patterson. He ran that business until 1992.

Company significance/history: Fred Seward of Seward Seacraft began building boats in the late 1940s. He was contracted by oil companies and boat rental companies to design and build steel-hull crew boats for the offshore industry in the 1950s. In 1960, Alcoa Aluminum manufacturing approached Seward to experiment with aluminum boats. Seward built a number of aluminum crew boats for Tidewater Marine and in 1968 got a huge government contract to build the infamous Swift Boats for the Vietnam War. Later, problems developed with the new technology that caused the boats to break apart. After modifications to the material and design, Seward continued building aluminum crew boats into the early 1970s.