Huckins Yacht Corporation

History

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 tallyman 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.