McCall, Norman

This is an oral history interview with Norman McCall conducted as part of the Houston History Project. Norman McCall is an 83-year-old crew boat owned and operator. He owned an operated McCall Boat Rentals for several years before merging with SEACOR International in the 1990s. He is one of the pioneering operators of the aluminum crew boats built in South Louisiana beginning in 1950s and has seen the industry progress for half a century--in many ways he has helped to lead that progress. Company significance/history: Norman McCall grew up in Grand Chenier in the 1920s into a family of boat builders. He joined the Navy and served in a submarine in World War II. After the war he worked for Pure Oil Company as a Captain of an ex-minesweeper in the Gulf of Mexico during the first days of the offshore industry, hauling supplies from Cameron to the platforms. He worked for Pure Oil for 19 years. In 1969, after successfully running a boat-rental company, McCall built his first new boat, an aluminum crewboat, the "Phyllis McCall" at Seward Seacraft in Morgan City. A few years later, he built several 110-foot crew boats--the first crew boats of that size to work in the GOM. By the mid 1970s, McCall and his boat builders began experimenting with multiple engines. He built the first quad-screw in 1975 and the first five-screw in 1981, all at Gulf Craft Shipyard in Patterson, LA. In 1996 McCall Boat Rentals (38 crew boats) merged with SEACOR, one of the industry’s largest crewboat operations