The Rise and Fall of Evinrude, The Outboard Mercury Stole From The Grave

For 113 years, Evinrude was the sound of an American summer. The blue cowling on the back of every wooden boat your father ever owned. The two-stroke smoke drifting across cold morning water before the sun came up. The pull cord you were finally trusted to yank yourself when you were old enough to sit up front. It was on every lake, every dock, every fishing trip you remember from being a kid. And on one quiet Wednesday in May of 2020, in a town in Wisconsin called Sturtevant, it was gone before lunch. This is the full story. Not the corporate version. The human one. It started with a Norwegian immigrant kid named Ole Evinrude who rowed a boat two and a half miles in 90 degree heat just to bring his fiancée Bess a scoop of ice cream. By the time he got back, the ice cream was soup in a paper cup. They laughed. They drank it. And on that long row home, Ole had an idea that would put a motor on every small boat in America. He built it on a workbench. His wife Bess wrote the slogan that built the empire. Their son Ralph inherited the company when his father died of a broken heart, and turned it into the biggest outboard motor maker on the planet. Then forty years after Ralph was buried, the men in the corner offices made the choices that finished it. The Ficht disaster. The bankruptcy three days before Christmas. The poisoned harbor in Waukegan. And the five minute phone call to a village that had given Evinrude a home for nineteen years. If you grew up on a lake, if your dad or your grandfather ever clamped a blue motor onto the back of a tin boat, this one is for you. We owe these stories to the people who lived them. Hit subscribe so the next one finds you when it's ready. Sources: Engineering Hall of Fame, ETHW, EPA Superfund records, Wisconsin DWD layoff filings, Marine Business News, Speed on the Water, JournalTimes, Boating Magazine, and the workers of Sturtevant. #Evinrude #Outboard #VintageBoats #AmericanMade #MarineHistory #LostBrands #ForgottenOutboards