Luther Blount, 90; inventor and boat builder owned cruise lines

Approaching 85 -- after decades as a boat builder, cruise line operator, ship's captain, inventor, and trombonist -- Luther Blount finally decided the time had come to retire.

Two years later, he was back at work, commuting by bicycle to the offices of his businesses -- which included a shipyard, American Canadian Caribbean Line, and Bay Queen Cruises -- from a second-floor residence where he had lived on his company's property in Warren, R.I.

``Dad definitely lived every day to the fullest," said his daughter, Nancy, of Barrington, R.I.

``And he was always working. There was not a time when my father's mind wasn't going a thousand miles a minute. He was always juggling everything and always trying to think how to make it better -- how to invent something to make it better."

From ship's hulls and propellers to a 1-pint toilet designed for boats and a durable type of thread, Mr. Blount's inventions are still in use on the seas and on dry land.

Mr. Blount died Sunday at Rhode Island Hospital, from which he had signed himself out earlier in the month to celebrate his 90th birthday.

``He wanted to make sure he would have his party," his daughter Joanne Dahmer of Tiverton, R.I., said with a laugh.

In the months before reaching that milestone, though, it was Mr. Blount who handed out presents.

As a philanthropist, Mr. Blount had donated millions to everything from land preservation to aquaculture research -- a passion since he worked as a young man in his grandfather's shellfish business.

Earlier this year he donated the Niagara Prince, a $6.5 million ship he had built and used in one of his cruise line companies, to Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Rhode Island College, and Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.

The three schools, along with Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., had awarded honorary doctorates to Mr. Blount, who had graduated from Wentworth with an associate's degree in 1937. And in April, he had attended the ground breaking at Roger Williams for the Luther Blount Shellfish Hatchery and Oyster Restoration Center.

With 21 patents to his name, Mr. Blount was tinkering and inventing until the end. At the shipyard he had kept storage space for contraptions in progress and those that never quite worked. Although he had tried his hand at retirement, he knew he wasn't cut out for kicking back.

``Once a guy quits, he doesn't last two, three more years," he said in an interview with The Boston Globe in 1999, when he was 83 years old.

Mr. Blount was born in Warren, the eldest of two brothers, and as a teenager he built his first vessel: a pine-and-canvas kayak.

Graduating from Barrington High School, he went on to Wentworth, creating hand-carved duck jewelry pins that he sold out of his Dippy Duck Widdle Shop in his hometown. Over the next few years, Mr. Blount also worked for his grandfather's oyster company, designed jewelry, was a machinist at a mill, and became a plant engineer in Connecticut.

He married Mary Ellen Hustad in 1943, and served briefly in the Army before returning to New England. While working for his brother's seafood company, Mr. Blount's inventive side blossomed and he created a steaming process to open clams.

``My memory of him as a child was that we'd be at the dinner table talking, and Luther would always be in another world, dreaming of another invention," said his daughter Julie of Warren. ``He was always tinkering and his mind would be somewhere else."

Ships were part of the family history, however, and it was only a matter of time before Mr. Blount returned to the building ways he first sampled as a teenager.

``His great-grandfather was lost at sea off the North Carolina coast in 1863," said his daughter Marcia of Warren. ``They were bringing cattle down to the Union Army."

In 1949, Mr. Blount started building vessels, among them Miss Liberty, a ferry used by the Circle Line in New York City. His company had constructed the 100th of more than 300 vessels built in his lifetime by 1964.

Noting that he was receiving lots of orders for ferries and sightseeing boats, Mr. Blount decided to diversify.

``It took me a long time," he said in 1999, ``but I finally figured out that the people buying my boats were making more money than I was."

He opened the company that later became American Canadian Caribbean Line, and followed that about a decade later with the Bay Queen dinner cruises.

Mr. Blount delved into restoring the oyster population in Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay while he was building his businesses.

``Our shorelines are being so tragically polluted by industrial waste that you want to cry," he told the Globe in 1970. ``It is brutal and it's the only significant threat to the return of the oyster."

His love of wildlife also extended to ducks, the models for his jewelry. Mr. Blount could identify the gender and species of a flying duck from a great distance, said his son, Bill of Nantucket.

During his brief retirement, Mr. Blount founded Ocean Bones, a trombone ensemble. From an early age, he had played trombone in church, and his instrument will be on hand during his funeral service tomorrow. His two marriages ended in divorce, and in the past few years he and his first wife had begun to date again.

About a week before he died, Mr. Blount bought a refrigerator and freezer.

``He was going to live forever," his daughter Julie said. ``He always thought ahead."

In addition to his four daughters and son, Mr. Blount leaves eight granddaughters, six grandsons, a great-granddaughter, and a great-grandson.

A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. tomorrow in First United Methodist Church in Warren. Burial will be in Prince's Hill Cemetery in Barrington, R.I.