Titan A Crowley Company

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Marine Salvage, Damage Stability, Firefighting, Wreck Removal, and Lightering

Titan was founded in 1980 by David Parrot. His life on the sea started in 1945 in Newfoundland, where he moved aboard his father's schooner at the age of 6 weeks. The schooner was his home for the next six years and his involvement with the sea has been virtually continuous ever since. Titan started as an undercapitalized, one-tug towing firm, struggling to expand and make a name for itself. Parrot's early role models were the two big Dutch salvage companies and some of their personnel. In 1982, Titan's tug "NESTOR" and her crew were hired as sub-contractors to assist one of the Dutch firms on a major salvage/wreck removal in the Caribbean. When the job was no longer economically feasible for the Dutch firm, Titan took over the operation (more as a challenge than from any point of business logic). While Parrot had enthusiasm, he knew his limitations and made the first of two major personnel decisions which would lead to Titan's ultimate success - the hiring of Captain Guy Wood as Salvage Master. Born in 1956, Captain Wood also grew up on the water. Although it was no longer common to see a Master still in his teenage years sailing foreign, Wood completed his first tow from the U.K. to India, as Master, when he was 18 years old. The tug was woefully under powered and nothing went particularly well, yet he got the job done. He had just the right combination of "bull dog" tenacity and high tech capability to complete that tow successfully and he brought those same valuable qualities to Titan. After successfully refloating the 13,000-ton vessel for which Parrot hired Capt. Wood, Titan re-directed its efforts toward salvage. Capt. Wood has acted as Senior Salvage Master in over 100 refloatings, wreck removals and dry salvages during his years with Titan. The second major decision leading to Titan's success - the hiring of Dick Fairbanks in 1988 - arose out of the combined limitations of Parrot and Wood. Born in 1945, Fairbanks also has had a life long exposure to the sea and had made his living in the marine field for many years. With a degree in engineering and years of employment as a researcher with General Electric's Marine Steam Turbine Division, he brought a high degree of technical expertise to Titan. Equally important were his strengths in business and administration. Fairbanks' vision and recognition of the realities of scale, lead to Titan's sale of its tugs and floating equipment. Without a large fleet, the possibility that Titan's equipment would be in the right place at the right time was remote. The decision to sell the floating equipment allowed the company to incorporate the Senior Masters and Engineers into a highly trained and mobile salvage team. These people, along with Titan's extraordinary team of divers, then became available to fly anywhere, along with the company's specialty salvage equipment, and be placed on board a casualty, tugs or other floating equipment, enabling them to solve a problem more quickly and efficiently, without being hampered by preferences in favor of Titan-owned equipment. Today, Parrot, Wood and Fairbanks are partners. Their combined talents have accelerated the company into the salvage field on a worldwide basis. The company is no longer bound by or restricted to working within a radius of its own equipment, nor is it burdened with the overhead costs associated with floating equipment. Most importantly, the company is always free to charter in the right piece of equipment without compromise. Titan has also found that it is often safer and more efficient to sub-contract certain highly specialized services than it is to provide those services themselves. People who work on certain types of problems every day know more about them than those who deal with them only occasionally. This combination has proven to be the right approach for Titan and it's clients, namely Owners, Underwriters and P&I Clubs. The three partners bring a high degree of flexibility, awareness, drive and willingness to find the solution to any casualty or risk.

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