Started by two men who already knew the river.

A T-2 tanker, then the 11th Airborne

Harry Baxter Stanley Sr. started his working life at sea, riding a T-2 tanker as a merchant mariner through the Second World War. When he was old enough he joined the United States Army and served as a paratrooper with the 11th Airborne Division, including duty with the division in post-war Japan.

When the Army was done with him he went back to the water and stayed there. It was not a family trade he inherited — it was one he chose, and then spent the next forty years at.

A career on the water, and a son who rode the boats

Harry Sr. owned and operated four inland river boats out of Houston. The M/V White Wing was his outright; the other three he co-owned and operated with Hollywood Marine. In that same period his son, Harry Baxter Stanley Jr. — Baxter — rode one of them, the M/V Alline, as a deckhand and worked in her engine room, working for his father.

The engine room is where he learned engines. Not in a classroom and not from a manual, but underway, where the only acceptable answer to a problem is a running motor.

After those boats were sold, Harry Sr. went ashore with Hollywood Marine as manager of maintenance and repair — the job he would retire from in 1992.

Four boats, and the names they carried

• M/V Creole Julie
• M/V White Wing
• M/V Bonnie Sue
• M/V Alline

He named them the way a riverman does — after the people he went home to. The M/V Alline carried his wife’s name: Alline Stanley, mother of the Incredible ½ Dozen. The Bonnie Sue carried their daughter’s.

In December 1988 the battleship Texas — BB-35, the last dreadnought to serve in both world wars — was pulled off her berth at San Jacinto for the fifty-six-mile tow to drydock in Galveston. It took six tugs to move her. The Creole Julie was on the job.

Six children, and two who went to sea themselves

Captain Harry and Alline Stanley raised six children — Baxter, Bonnie, Yvonne, Yvette, Cheri, and Eric, in whose memory the family still writes his name — the Incredible ½ Dozen, as they sign themselves. Baxter was the one who went into the shop. The twins, Yvonne and Yvette, went into the United States Navy. Their sister Bonnie Sue has worked service at SPECO ever since.

Father and son open SPECO

In May of 1974, Stanley Parts & Equipment Company opened in Channelview, Texas. Baxter took it on as president and ran the shop day to day, backed by forty years of his father knowing exactly what a fleet needs before it asks.

The original proposition was salvage: buy used marine equipment, part it down, and refurbish and sell the pieces the fleets needed. The repair work grew out of that, and the phone has been answered ever since.

Harry Sr. comes ashore for good

He retired from Hollywood Marine and came into the family shop full time, selling and hauling — picking up and delivering engines himself. Not a desk: a truck, and customers he had known for forty years. He stayed in the marine industry the rest of his life, working alongside the son he had brought up on the boats.

Propeller Club Person of the Year

Harry Sr. was a longtime member and a past board member of The Propeller Club of the United States, Port of Houston — the trade organization for the port's maritime community. In 1996 the club named him its Person of the Year.

It came from the industry he had given his working life to, and it came while he was still going into the shop. That is the measure of the man this company was built by.

Fifty years, three river systems

The shop grew into heavy-duty diesel repair, generator sets and pump units, deck equipment, custom fabrication, and parts distribution — serving fleets from the inland waterway system. A forestry division followed, servicing and selling wood chippers, stump grinders, and the machines that work with them. Different equipment, same diesel crew.

Today that includes lines built in-house: the KilAire emergency shutdown valve and a ventilated barge hatch cover designed around a standard off-the-shelf fan, because nobody on a deck wants to be locked into proprietary hardware.

Still family, still in Channelview

Baxter is still president, more than fifty years into the same role. The family thread runs straight through the leadership team: his little sister Bonnie Sue Boyett coordinates service, and her grandson Joel Richards is vice president. Three generations, one shop. The crew boat working the fleets under SPECO colors is the M/V Captain Harry, named for their father. When a boat is down at two in the morning, the person who answers is someone who knows what that costs you.