William Starling Burgess

William Starling Burgess

William Starling Burgess (December 25, 1878 - 1947) was a yacht designer, aviation pioneer, and naval architect.

Biography

William Starling Burgess was born in Boston. He was the son of Edward Burgess who died when Starling was 12. Starling attended Milton Academy and Harvard University. He was a partner in Burgess & Packard in 1902 with Alpheus Appleton Packard. In 1905 he established a yacht yard in Marblehead, Massachusetts and began designing and building yachts and boats.

In 1908 he became interested in aviation and in 1909 joined with airplane designer Augustus Moore Herring who had left Glenn Curtiss to form the Herring-Burgess Company. The Herring-Burgee Co. built the biplane Flying Fish, which flew over Plum Island on April 17, 1910. This was first fully powered and controlled flight in New England. Herring-Burgess built several planes licensed by the Wright Brothers. Norman Prince and his friends hired Burgess to build a plane for them to race in the Gordon Bennett Cup Race.

In 1911 Herring left, and Greely S. Curtis and Frank H. Russell joined Burgess to form the Burgess Company. In 1912 the Burgess Company built their first hydroplane designed by John William Dunne and soon was selling the Burgess-Dunne hydroplanes to the U.S.Army and the U.S. Navy. In addition, the Royal Canadian Air Forcepurchased a hydroplane in 1914. Burgess received the 3rd Collier Trophy to be issued in 1915 for his hydro-aeroplane. with With 800 employeesBurgess Company became the largest employer in Marblehead.

When the U.S. entered WWI, the Burgess Company was sold to John N. Willys (who then sold it to Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company). Burgess joined the Navy, became a Lieutenant Commander and designed planes for the Navy.

After the war he returned to boat design and construction and later designed three successful J-class yacht defenders of the America's Cup: Enterprise in 1930, Rainbow in 1934, and Ranger in 1937.

In 1922 he and A. Loring Swasey and Frank C. Paine formed the design firm Burgess, Swasey & Paine in Boston.Lewis Francis Herreshoff worked with them. They designed several yachts, including the Advace for John S. Lawrence, the Gosson for Charles Francis Adams III, and the ELLEN for Charles Foster. In 1926 he dissolved Burgess, Swasey & Paine and joined the firm Burgess & Morgan, Ltd in New York City. In 1930 he was commuting to NYC and living in Darien, Connecticut with his wife Else and 2 children.

Burgess was friends with Buckminster Fuller and was helped him when Fuller was designing and building his aluminum Dymaxion car.

In 1935 he became a consulting naval architect for the Aluminum Company of America with his office at the Bath Iron Works, where he promoted the use of corrosion resistant alloys for ships. He designed the Alumette which was built at the Bath Iron Works. He also designed the sailing yacht Ranger with aluminum masts for Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and he worked closely with Geerd Hendel.

During World War II he was employed as a civilian engineer and worked for the Anti-Submarine Development Detachment of the US Atlantic Fleet. In 1946 he was working at the Stevens Institute of Technology on damage control research.

Burgess married 5 times. He first married to Helene Adams Willard(1882-1902) in 1901. In 1904 he married Rosamond Tudor(b.1878), the portrait artist and granddaughter of Frederic Tudor. Tudor and Burgess had 3 children: sons Edward(1905-1910), who drowned after falling off their boat and Fredrick(b.1907): daughter Starling (b.1915-2008). Starling later changed her name to Tasha Tudor. Burgess's married Else Foss in 1925 and had two children, Diana and Ann. He subsequently wed Nannie Dale Biddle in 1933 and Majorie Young in 1945.

A friend of his last wife, Marjorie Young, described Burgess: "With all his brilliance, he is a child, and that is part of his charm. He will not face hard facts, but will hide from them and will love the person who shields him from them."

References

* [http://www.mysticseaport.org/library/manuscripts/coll/coll193/coll193.html W.Starling Burgess Papers] , at Mystic Seaport.
* [http://shl.stanford.edu/Bucky/dymaxion/burgess.htm Burgess and Buckminister Fuller.]
* [http://martinyachts.com/anitra/history/designer.htm Anitra Designer.]
* "Boston's Gold Coast" by Joseph E. Garland, published 1981, pages 217-218.
* "Burgess Genealogy: Descendants of the Four Sons of Thomas Burgess", by Katharine W. Hiam, published 1997.
* "The Art of Tasha Tudor" by Harry Davis, published 2000.
* [http://cowhampshire.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/4/24/1908304.html Tasha Tudor ancestry.]


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