Goodbye, Gulf Shipper.

A look over the past 18 years

That's all she wrote, folks.

This is the last issue of Gulf Shipper. Subscribers will hereafter receive The Journal of Commerce, whose veteran editorial staff guarantee that the shipping and logistics industry in the Gulf will be covered with the same editorial integrity you have come to expect from Gulf Shipper writers.

For this last issue, we wanted to recount some of Gulf Shipper's 19-year history. The little magazine that was started by the two sons of the founders of Florida Shipper quickly became the Gulf transportation community's own magazine and has remained faithful to that cause ever since. We asked Gulf Shipper co-founder Glenn Higgins to write about his recollections of the early years, and JoC writers Janet Plume and Janet Nodar have attempted to fill in the rest.

The Early Years

GLENN JAMES HIGGINS

In the summer of 1975 in Miami, Fla., kids played games around a pool, accompanied by the usual shouting, shrieking and laughing.

A phone rang. The red phone.

"It's the red phone!" screamed a skinny 11-year old. "The red phone!"

Total silence. All play, all sound and motion ceased.

The red phone sat beside a typewriter on a dining room table in suburban Miami. The children were silent. A blonde woman cleared her throat and answered: "Good afternoon, Florida Shipper Magazine. This is Karen."

A start-up magazine was being published from my dining room.

Karen was really Elaine. Elaine was the kids' mother. The skinny kid was me.

Fast-forward to1990 in Houston, Texas, where John Martin awakened me from my sleep on the office floor.

"Well, we did it." He held up Gulf Shipper Magazine. Volume 1, Issue 1. There were thousands stacked around us.

"And we've got to do it all again next week."

John groaned. John was my high school buddy, my closest friend and editor-in-chief of Gulf Shipper. His experience in shipping? Anti-submarine warfare and sonar tech. My experience in publishing? Not even a high school newspaper. Now I was a "publisher."

"Three months ago I was in San Diego in the Navy," he reminded me.

"Three months ago I was on a …