Charles Eugene Morgan Jr., 93, known to all as Charley, passed away last weekend, just a few hours after his wife Maurine died.
It has been said that Charley Morgan is the only person to ever single-handedly design, build, and skipper his own 12 Meter in the America’s Cup. Prior to and since Charley’s 1970 Cup attempt, all campaigns were organized by large syndicates. He even sailed the boat on its own bottom from St. Petersburg, Florida to Newport, Rhode Island to compete in the 1970 America’s Cup Defender Trials.
As a high school student in St. Petersburg, I recall the excitement as Morgan built and competed in the 12-meter yacht Heritage, only to be beaten by Intrepid skippered by Bill Ficker. Although “Ficker was quicker,” the New York Times commented that “Heritage, designed, built and skippered by Charlie Morgan Jr., won first prize in the beauty contest. Her golden mahogany hull glistened in the hot sun light and her light‐air spinnaker was the prettiest seen so far, a top‐to‐bottom dazzler of blue, orange and white.”
Ironically, Heritage, built by a pioneer in production fiberglass sailboats, was the last America’s Cup competitor to be built of wood.
Like so many Floridians, Morgan was originally from somewhere else. Born in Chicago in 1929 and raised on the West Coast of Florida, he attended the University of Tampa and took a job with Johnson Sails, located at the Jean Street Shipyard on the Hillsborough River. In 1952 he founded Morgan Racing Sails in Tampa, FL.
Developing an interest in yacht design, Morgan’s first well-known boat was the 40′ fiberglass centerboard yawl Paper Tiger that won the Southern Ocean Racing Conference in 1961 and 1962. Unable to find a builder for Tiger Cub, a smaller version of Paper Tiger, Morgan founded Morgan Yacht Corporation in 1965.
Morgan Yachts produced sailboat models from 24 to 45 feet long. Its most successful model was the Morgan Out Island 41, a shallow draft cruiser designed for the charter industry. Both loved and hated, the design was referred to as one of the very first “charter barges,” or “the fornicatorium,” as Morgan himself once put it. The Out Island 41 has been described as the “most popular boat over 40 feet overall ever built.”
In 1968, he sold Morgan Yacht Corporation to Beatrice Foods, providing funds for Morgan to design and build the wooden 12-meter yacht Heritage. He went on to found Heritage Yacht Corporation in 1975, producing trawlers and sailing yachts.
I met Charley Morgan only once when I stopped by his office in Pinellas Park to give him a copy of a CAD drawing I had done of his Out Island 41 for a naval architecture design class at the University of Michigan. He was appreciative and gracious to the bearded fanboy who had arrived unannounced at his door. Only after I graduated and took a job in the Northeast did I realize that Morgan also lived on the Isle of Capri in Treasure Island, FL, where I lived when I was in high school.
He would also later design trawlers for Chris Craft and sailboats for Compac. In his career, Charley Morgan designed 57 sailboats.
As an indication of his versatility, Morgan also built a fleet of more than a hundred watercraft for Disney World, the largest of which was around 120 feet—submarines, jungle cruise boats, the steam launches.
I was a owner of a Heritage racing boat built by his company. I ended up selling the boat because of a job change but kept in touch with Charlie over the years.
He was a great person, that once you met him, he made you feel like you knew him all your life.
May he & his wife rest in peace.
Charley and Maurine were class act. I was honored to host them at my home twice. He spoke of my Ted and he being like kids in a sand box designing sailboats. RIP to Charlie and Maurine.