{"id":5080,"date":"2014-09-02T13:15:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T17:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/?p=5080"},"modified":"2014-09-02T13:15:06","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T17:15:06","slug":"arthur-hancock-78-still-loves-the-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/arthur-hancock-78-still-loves-the-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Hancock, 78, still loves the challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

FALL RIVER, MA \u2013 Arthur Hancock owns four Buick Roadmaster station wagons.\u00a0 He\u2019s owned 10 of them over the years, but currently only has four in his possession \u2013 some of them for parts.\u00a0 We\u2019re rolling through the streets of Fall River in one of them, the nearly 18-foot-long wagon cruising like a big-bellied trawler cutting through a sou\u2019west swell.<\/p>\n

Arthur likes big station wagons.\u00a0 They\u2019re comfy, ride well, and you can get a wicked pile of blocks, deck plates, boat hooks, and other stuff in the back.<\/p>\n

For years, Arthur averaged a good 50,000 miles annually, delivering a lot of his marine hardware in person.\u00a0 Now, at the age of 78, he\u2019s cut that down to \u201cabout 25,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve just left the Fall River Marine Museum where Arthur is a director emeritus.\u00a0 One of the highlights was a massive all-whalebone model of the three-master warship Hancock, which Arthur tried to convince me was named after him.<\/p>\n

You could almost tell that the Roadmaster was disappointed that we were headed back home so soon.\u00a0 No runs to Eastport, ME or Wanchese, NC today.\u00a0 Just breakfast, the museum, and back to Hancock Marine.<\/p>\n

We cruise down Clark St. and take a right onto River St.\u00a0 Arthur pulls into the parking lot in front of the building he moved the business into back in 1974.\u00a0 He shuts the big Buick off and turns to face me.<\/p>\n

\u201cOK,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cWhattaya want to know?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Roots<\/b><\/p>\n

While this year marks the 50th anniversary of Arthur taking the helm at Hancock Marine, you actually have go back almost another three decades \u2013 to 1935 \u2013 to find the company\u2019s roots.\u00a0 That\u2019s when Arthur\u2019s father first set up shop on the eastern shore of Mount Hope Bay at the mouth of the Taunton River.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father was a helluva guy,\u201d says Arthur.\u00a0 \u201cHe was a good father to me, steering me in the right direction as far as hard work and all that sort of stuff.\u00a0 He graduated second in his class from Massachusetts Nautical School in Boston \u2013 what\u2019s now known as Mass Maritime Academy \u2013 in 1922.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he graduated, he chose to get into the world of sail, which was in its dying days at that point,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cWhy?\u00a0 I think he liked a good challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur\u2019s father built a railway in 1930 for his own use and began doing machine work for others a few years after that.\u00a0 But it was his invention of the Hancock winch in 1935 that truly established the business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hancock winch was geared mostly towards smaller vessels \u2013 35′ to 50′ \u2013 as the main towing winch,\u201d says Arthur…<\/p>\n

\"CFN_9_14cover\"<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Read the rest and much, much more in the September issue of Commercial Fisheries News.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Read online\u00a0immediately and download for future reference.<\/p>\n

[add_to_cart=5081]<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FALL RIVER, MA \u2013 Arthur Hancock owns four Buick Roadmaster station wagons.\u00a0 He\u2019s owned 10 of them over the years, but currently only has four in his possession \u2013 some of them for parts.\u00a0 We\u2019re rolling through the streets of Fall River in one of them, the nearly 18-foot-long wagon cruising like a big-bellied trawler … <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-news","category-september-14","nodate","item-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5080"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5115,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080\/revisions\/5115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}