Ardmore Shipping founder and chief executive Anthony Gurnee has enjoyed many different roles in his maritime career and has been guided by one simple rule.
“If you’re not having fun and having an adventure in shipping, then you’re not doing it right,” the tanker boss told TradeWinds as he prepares to retire in September.
American Gurnee established Ardmore in Cork, Ireland, in 2010, but he had previous links to the Emerald Isle.
“When I was 15 or 16, I went to boarding school here,” the CEO said. “It was miserable. I mean, we were underfed. There was no hot water. It was a Quaker school, but they still managed to whack us around a bit in Waterford.”
But the august institution did have what Gurnee called an “amazing” career library.
“It was about two feet wide, with a bunch of brochures and stuff. And there was one on the shelf from BP Tankers. And you could join as a cadet, and they would train you for three months, and then if you came in first in the class, you got a sextant,” he explained. “And then you were third mate on BP Tankers.”
So he went home and told his father: “‘This is it’, because I always wanted to do something with ships. And he said, ‘Well if you want to go to sea, you want to join the navy. And if you join the navy, you want to join our navy’.”
He applied to the US Naval Academy, and was “quite surprised” to get in, he said.
“It was like winning the sweepstake. You know, protein, hot water,” Gurnee joked. “They could yell at you, but they wouldn’t hit you, all these good things. It was more than anyone could ever ask for in 1979.
“I’ve always been interested in ships, it’s just in the blood,” the Ardmore supremo said.
Not chasing the Russians
The new role eventually saw the young recruit on a frigate based in the Far East for three years, before a switch to naval intelligence, which he found fascinating.
“I did that for a couple of years. And very randomly, I was assigned in Washington to the only part of the navy that studies the shipping industry. And for the first few weeks, I was dismayed because I wanted to chase Russia, and things like that,” Gurnee told TradeWinds.
“And then I became just absolutely fascinated by the industry. So that’s really where it all started. This was in the mid-1980s,” he said.
“The Iran-Iraq war was going on, so we were very focused on analysing ship attacks in the Persian Gulf, seaborne terrorist-related activity, and illegal arms shipments,” the CEO recalled.
“And we even caught our own government shipping arms. And the White House told us not to track those ships. Can you imagine that?” he added.
Gurnee eventually went ashore and attended Columbia to do an MBA in finance, all with the “very clear intention of going into shipping”.
“And I interviewed with everybody out there, and ended up going to Citibank,” he said.
There was also later a stint at Nedship Bank.
Even so, Gurnee said he is “a very reluctant financial person”.
However, at Citi, one of his favourite clients was Torben Karlshoej, the owner of Teekay.
“At one point, he called up, and he asked me if I’d like a real job. And I said I’m listening,” Gurnee told TradeWinds. “So we moved out to Vancouver to join Teekay finance just before the market collapsed in 1992. And that was one of those very intense learning experiences.”
The CEO describes Karlshoej as “a big risk taker”.
“I think Torben was always very private. He was a classic entrepreneur,” he said. “Great guy. Learned a lot.”
