Posted on October 22, 2025
By Peter Bowe, Publisher, DredgeWire Publisher
DredgeWire notes with sadness the passing of Charles D. “Charlie” Little, who spent nearly half a century working for Ellicott Dredges’ predecessor, Ellicott Machine Corp. He passed away on October 9 at age 93.
Charlie had a very distinguished career, rising to the position of General Manager of Ellicott’s Dredge Division and Chief Engineer.
During his career, he was responsible for the design of hundreds of dredges, including both standard designs and custom machines.
I had the opportunity to travel with Charlie to South Korea, Australia, and Yugoslavia (as it was called then), among the many countries where his industry-leading dredgers were delivered.
In South Korea, he supervised the design of two 36-inch dredges for Hyundai and Daewoo, both used for land reclamation.
Ellicott 13,000 KW dredge built by Daewoo
In Australia, he designed a titanium dioxide, heavy minerals mining dredge, the Cooljarloo 1, which was at the time the largest mineral sands dredge ever built. It also had the world’s largest dual-wheel excavator. He supervised its design, construction, and delivery from Baltimore and parts around the world to the mine site in under 12 months — an astounding achievement.
Ellicott dredge “Cooljarloo 1” near Perth Australia
In the Vojvodina region of Yugoslavia, Ellicott won an order for a unique deep-digging coal mining dredge, for which Charlie received a patent for a special spud carriage system.
Charlie used to tell me how the engineering project he admired the most, and which inspired him, was the development of the Boeing 747. He considered that to be the pinnacle of American engineering and manufacturing.
Charlie was solely responsible for the design of the Ellicott Series 370 portable dredge, which became the world’s most successful portable dredge — even now — with hundreds sold to dozens of countries around the world. He sketched out the first version of this dredge on the back of a napkin based on input from his sales team. https://www.dredge.com/
He received numerous patents for virtually all key components of dredging systems — from excavator to pump to spuds to early electronic versions of production metering systems.
As Engineering Manager, he supervised engineers during challenging transitions from drafting tables to AutoCAD systems to computers.
Longtime Ellicott Executive Assistant Myrna Labarre remembered fondly how Charlie used to laugh when she struggled to incorporate technical terminology in her shorthand notes of his dictated dredge specifications — where, for example, “swivel elbow” came out as “swiffel.”
Longtime Ellicott COO Marty Barnes has some fun memories of Charlie:
“When I first saw Charlie, he was standing at a designer’s draft board working out a problem on his slide-rule. I had learned to use a slide-rule, but Mr. Little made a flurry of calculations, one after another. I just thought—wow!!!
He was a fantastic engineer, familiar with all disciplines. Because he knew all the processes needed for dredge manufacturing—machining, welding, assembly—he was able to maximize in-house manufacturing economically. And customers loved him.”
He was justifiably proud of being a Korean War veteran.
Charlie was predeceased by his wife, Marilyn, but is survived by his daughter, Carol Lynn Nolan, her husband, and multiple grandchildren.
