Dodge Morgan

In September 2010, Morgan died at age 78 from complications from cancer surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 1998, Morgan purchased Snow Island in Harpswell, Maine. He commissioned Portland architect Winton Scott to design a home for him on the island. In a feature story, the Boston Globe described Morgan's island as "30 acres of dense cedar forest and fragrant fern, spongy moss and scaly lichen, cattail bog and rockweed shore smack in the middle of Quahog Bay." In 1999, the Maine chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave the compound a design award and called it "a triumph of programmatic virtue in a natural setting that demands nothing less." For the next 12 years, Morgan lived on his 30-acre island sanctuary where he moored six boats of various types. In 2005, he told a reporter, "I live alone here on Snow Island. In one sense, I am quite pleased with my solitary life. I engage with people I love and admire, one-on-one, with an intense joy." Most recently, he lived on Snow Island with his fiancée, Mary Beth Teas.

Morgan wrote about his voyage in a book titled "The Voyage of American Promise," published by Houghton Mifflin in 1989. AROUND ALONE, the 57-minute film produced by The New Film Company, Inc. about his around-the-world journey was the first featured film in the PBS series, "Adventure." It first aired in March 1987.

In 1985, at age 53, he embarked his journey around the world on the 60-foot cutter American Promise. The boat was designed by 1974 America's Cup winner Ted Hood. Hood recalled that the boat was designed for safety and redundancy rather than speed: "Everyone said there's no way that boat is going to get around the world in record speed, but it did."

Morgan departed from Ordnance Island, in St. George's, Bermuda, on November 12, 1985, and returned there on April 11, 1986, completing the journey in 150 days, 1 hour, and 6 minutes. As the American Promise sailed into St. George's Harbour, Morgan's project manager, Grant Robinson, noted that the boat looked spit-and-polished. He radioed, " "She doesn't look any the worse for wear at all. We see you've still got some paint on her." Morgan replied, "What do you mean 'some paint on her'? She's only been used once."

In 1985, Morgan moved to Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He purchased the alternative weekly newspaper the Maine Times in 1985 and also purchased the Casco Bay Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Portland, Maine, in 1990. In 2002, the Casco Bay Weekly stopped publishing. Morgan began by laying off much of the staff, noting at the time that the newspaper had been losing money for about a year. When the paper was finally shut down, Morgan said, "I don't want to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for money buried in a small-market weekly newspaper."

Morgan's first marriage was brief and ended in divorce. He married his second wife, Manny, in 1972, and they had two children, Kimberly Promise and Hoyt David. Morgan's second marriage also ended in divorce, but after a rewarding and loving family was built. All four remained very close.

In 1971, Morgan formed Controlonics Corporation in Westford, Massachusetts. The company manufactured and marketed many early radio frequency devices, early radar and their most successful Whistler radar detector. He started the company with a $5,000 loan and built it "from three people in a garage to 300 people." Interviewed in 2005, Morgan said that, after his children, the accomplishment that made him proudest was "the culture of openness that I felt responsible for at my company. It was even more important than our financial success. There was a culture that accepted and celebrated individual eccentricities." Morgan sold Controlonics in December 1983 for a sum between $32 million and $35 million.

Morgan was the third person and the first American to sail solo around the globe with no stops. At the time, Sports Illustrated reported, "Only [two] men before Morgan -- none of them American -- had sailed around the world alone without stopping. No taking on additional food or water; no assistance accepted from another vessel; no using the motor for propulsion." In making the journey in 150 days, Morgan shattered the prior record of 292 days set in 1971 by English sailor Chay Blyth. (Note Blyth's voyage in British Steel was "Westabout" against the prevailing winds.)

Morgan made a promise to himself in the early 1960s that he would one day sail around the world. He sold Controlonics to "follow a dream I had years before on the old schooner, to sail around the world on a boat which was designed for that."

Dodge David Morgan (January 15, 1932 – September 14, 2010) was an American sailor, businessman, publisher and "self-proclaimed contrarian." He flew fighter jets in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s, worked as a newspaper reporter in Alaska, and became a millionaire by operating Controlonics, a company that manufactured Whistler radar detectors from 1971 to 1983. He gained fame in 1986 as the first American to sail solo around the world with no stops; Dodge was the third person to ever accomplish the feat and set eleven world records during his voyage including the fastest ever solo, non-stop circumnavigation. He also set a world record for eastward sailing when he completed his journey in 150 days, cutting the prior record of 292 days nearly in half. He spent his later years living on a 30-acre island that he purchased in 1998 in Maine's Quahog Harbor.

Morgan was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1932. His father, Russell Morgan, was a pharmacist who died when Morgan was two years old. His mother, Ruth Dodge Morgan remarried, and Morgan recalled having "quite a happy life" with his new family. He described himself as "a lousy student" who devoted most of his time to "sports and other such activities." He also worked at his uncle's boatyard on Cape Cod as a teenager.