Luther Blount

Luther H. Blount (1916 to 2006) was an American entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist who was a shipbuilder and held 22 patents, most of them relating to his trade. Born in Warren, Rhode Island, he attended Wentworth Institute of Technology, earning an associate degree in 1937, and worked as a mill machinist and plant engineer. In seventh grade he reinvented the steam engine from a tin can, an alcohol burner and a paddle wheel. He started a shipbuilding company in 1949, first called Blount Marine Corporation and later Blount Boats, which built more than 300 ships in his lifetime, and in 1966 began offering cruises through the American Canadian Caribbean Line. By the 1990s Blount Boats was one of the few independently owned shipyards in the United States building commercial passenger vessels. He also gave to causes such as oyster reintroduction in Narragansett Bay and received honorary doctorates from three New England schools.