Ernest Dean Sr.

The late, Captain Ernest Alexander Dean was born on May 23, 1915 in the quaint settlement of Sandy Point, Abaco, Bahamas. As the eldest son of a fishing smack captain, Ernest’s introduction to the sea came very early on in life. At the tender age of 9, he went to live in Cay Sal, where he was tutored under a lighthouse keeper, and learned the skills of lighthouse operation. At age 14, he became a fisherman on his father’s first boat, the Champion, where he learned the value of often excruciatingly hard work and began to hone his own business sense. Finally, at 17, he was charged with the responsibility of running the Champion, and thus began his lifelong career as a boat Captain. Even at such an early age, Captain Dean recognized the value of experience and consistent self improvement. His unquenchable thirst for knowledge helped to shape him into an adept and intuitive captain, who was well respected by men even decades his senior.

This insatiable desire for knowledge of his craft, led to his first experience in boat building in 1942, when he assisted his father in building the Salome, right along the shoreline of Sandy Point. Several years later, he would put this experience to good use in building his very own boat, the first Captain Dean. His attention to detail and philosophy of building a boat “the way it should be built” led to him journeying into the pine forest to hand select, gather, and transport the wood himself. He took immense pride in the fact that he built this boat with his own two hands. This painstaking labor of love led to the launch of the Captain Dean in 1949, and although it was not the first boat that Captain Ernest Dean owned, it would serve as a monument to the dedicated and skilled Captain that he was.

In 1951, Captain Dean’s boating experience would steer him on a new course. Inspired by his wife, Eula’s vision, as well as their own need for provisions for their young children, he ventured into providing a regular mail boat service for their small community. With his signature persistence and tenacity, he was able to garner the government contract to begin a mail boat service into Sandy Point and Mores Island. Eventually, this run expanded to include Bullock’s Harbour and Sweeting’s Cay as well. Captain Dean’s ingenuity would serve to revolutionize these growing island communities; as they now had reliable access to not only their mail, but also the supplies and food items that they had so desperately lacked up to this point. In addition to this, it provided members of the community with the means to travel as passengers back and forth to Nassau as the need would arise.

A notable trait of Captain Dean’s career was his constant need to evolve. Over the course of his lifetime, and with every new ship, he was continuously innovating. This was especially evident in the introduction of the Captain Dean V in 1979; the first steel hull boat in all of The Bahamas that was built and designed specifically for the mail service. As a pioneer in the mail boat industry, and patriarch of his family, Captain Dean’s commitment to excellence and service has left an indelible impression on those who came in contact with or worked alongside him. He instilled the ideals of a strong work ethic and initiative into his children; and today his legacy is carried on through his sons, who continue to usher in a new wave of shipping and fishing in The Bahamas; all while maintaining Captain Dean’s core values of hard work, integrity, and community mindedness.