Frits de Voogt was a student at Delft University of Technology when his father, naval architect Henri, founded Feadship in 1949 as a cooperative venture to help export luxury yachts. Frits took over the firm after his father’s death in 1958 and helped increase its prominence and profitability during the 1960s, transforming it into one of the world’s premier yacht design and construction concerns. He remained head of the firm through 1995, at which point he passed it on to his own son. In his younger days, Frits was a rower and he represented the Netherlands in the coxless fours event at the 1952 Helsinki Games. There, alongside Ruud Sesink Clee, Jan op den Velde, and Kees van Vugt, he was eliminated in the round one repêchage.
Netherlands