Interviewer(s): Jason Theriot

Affiliation: University of Houston

Scott Tibbs is the president of Gulf Craft, Inc. an aluminum crew boat ship builder located in Patterson, LA on the Bayou Teche. He received a degree in History from LSU and flew crop dusters before getting into the ship building business. Currently, his son, Kevin, runs the daily operations. Tibbs was the pilot for Fred Sewart of Sewart Seacraft, one of the original pioneers of aluminum crew boats. When Sewart received contracts to build swift boats for the US Navy during Vietnam, Sewart subcontracted Tibbs for small aluminum fabrication. Tibbs had prior experience working and welding aluminum on airplanes. He fabricated aluminum parts at his father's property on the Bayou Teche and when Sewart merged with Teledyne, Tibbs opened up a new yard with three employees to build small crew boats. He delivered his first crew boat in 1966.

Company significance/history: Gulf Craft begin building aluminum "Joe Boats" for oil companies in the 1960s. These boats were used for shallow water inland activity and were small enough to pull up to a platform, keep the engine running in idle, and take a quick meter reading or check the instruments and go on to the next platform. From there, they began building small crew boats. In the 1970s, Gulf Craft built several large crew boats for Norman McCall. When a slowdown occurred in the 1970s, Gulf Craft began building party fishing boats for the East Coast. When the "bust" occurred in the 1980s, Gulf Craft was able to survive by buying crew boats for cheap, and converting the hulls to party fishing boats for customers on the east. Today, Gulf Craft has a partnership with Norman McCall and SEACOR to build multiple crew boats every year.