PEOPLE | SPOTLIGHT
“GIANTS OF THE SEA”
Ships & Men Who Changed the World From his home in New York, Mobile native John D. McCown Jr. discusses his mentor, shipping titan Malcom McLean, and the book that their relationship inspired. interview by BRECK PAPPAS
JOHN D. MCCOWN JR.
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n the preface to his book “Giants of the Sea,” John D. McCown explains that he simply never grew out of his boyhood obsession for enormous machinery. “This was kindled by a father who would load five pajama-clad children into his 1962 Impala convertible and, after an ice-cream cone stop, tour fire stations in Mobile, Alabama,” he explains. This fixation would eventually lead McCown, a Mobile native, to a 40-year career in the shipping industry and a close relationship with Malcom McLean, the celebrated “Father of Containerization” with a Mobile connection of his own; convinced that he could create a container that could be transferred between trucks, ships and railroad cars, McLean purchased Mobile’s Waterman Steamship Company and set out to bring his revolutionary idea into existence. On April 26, 1956, container shipping was born when McLean loaded and launched the SS Ideal X at Port Newark, New Jersey. “In less than eight hours of cargo activity,” McCown writes, “the new process had loaded the same amount of cargo that it would have taken some three days to load with the traditional breakbulk loading process.” The ramifications of McLean’s breakthrough has since been compared to the invention of the steam engine. As McCown set out to tell the life story of his mentor, he realized that the story of the shipping industry at large is one that is seldom told or celebrated. With this entertaining yet informative book, McCown sets out to change just that.
Can you tell us a little about yourself and your career in the shipping industry? I was born and raised in Mobile and educated at St. Ignatius and McGill. After graduating from LSU with a business degree, I headed north to work for a bank in NYC and a couple of years later made my way up to Boston to get an MBA at Harvard Business School. Towards the end of my first year, a professor started class by holding up a Business Week magazine. Malcom McLean was on the cover with an article titled, “Malcom McLean’s $500 Million Gamble.” My professor said that this is the sort of risk-taking entrepreneur we hope to make you think like here at HBS. I knew Malcom had a Mobile connection, and it piqued my interest. Reading the article, I was inspired and ditched my plans to work for an investment bank the summer between business school years. Instead, I took a summer job in financial analysis at U.S. Lines. After graduation, I joined the McLean Securities parent company. I’ve been broadly involved in shipping for over 40 years since then.
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