architect inventor manufacturer poet
William Starling Burgess was born on December 25, 1878 into a prominent Boston family, the oldest of two sons of Edward Burgess, renowned Boston yacht designer whose father Benjamin Franklin Burgess had been a notable New England merchant, and Caroline Louisa (Sullivant) Burgess of Columbus, Ohio, daughter of William Starling Sullivant of an old Virginia family.
Starling Burgess' early years exposed him to yachting at home and abroad, especially during the 1880's, when his father designed the three America's Cup defenders, the awards from which the elder Burgess earned sufficient funds for his sons' educations. Burgess received his B. A. from Harvard in 1901.
After service aboard the auxiliary cruiser Prairie as a gunner's mate during the Spanish-American War, Burgess was tempted to follow his lively artistic imagination, influenced by the works of John Ruskin, into a literary career.
In the first of several partnerships (1900) and single business ventures (1904) in the design and construction of yachts and commercial vessels in the Marblehead-Boston area, Burgess exhibited a flair for experimentation and created impressive, fast vessels, as in the scowtype "skimming dishes" like Outlook (1902), the Sonder and Q and R Universal Rule class yachts, the largest five-masted sailing schooner ever built, the Jane Palmer (1904), and the less successful fast fishing schooner Elizabeth Silsbee (1905).
With Norman Prince, subsequent founder of the Lafayette Escadrille, Burgess took flying lessons from the Wrights and in 1910 opened his own airplane manufacturing company at Marblehead.
Utilizing the designs of his only two competitors, the Wright and Glenn H. Curtiss companies, his firm shared with them many early American and British government contracts; its stocks were purchased by the Curtiss company early in 1916.
Burgess' fertile mind succeeded best when he was able to apply his knowledge of the sea to naval "hydroaeroplanes" (seaplanes), first with pontoon floats for land planes, then with the D-1 flying boat (1913), and finally his adapting of Englishman J. W. Dunne's revolutionary delta-shaped, swept-wing tailless design into the Burgess-Dunne seaplane, earning him the 1915 Collier Trophy for that year's "greatest progress in aviation. "
He and his brother Charles Paine Burgess joined the navy during World War I to design dirigibles: Starling for the duration as a lieutenant commander, Charles for the rest of his life as the navy's leading authority in airship design.
After the war Burgess returned to yacht designing, into which he introduced innovations to hulls, rigging, and sails--notably the "staysail rig, " first used on the schooner Advance (1924).
Operating from Boston as the partner of Frank C. Paine (1922 - 1926) and after 1927 from New York in several shortlived partnerships, he designed all sizes of sailing vessels but most notably large, fast, racing craft, like the Gloucester fishing schooner Mayflower (1922), criticized as a racing yacht in disguise, the forty-six-foot rating Class M sloop Prestige (1927) of Harold S. Vanderbilt, and the famous ocean racing schooner Nina (1928).
Assisted initially by his brother Charles, he designed the three seventy-six-foot rating Class J sloops which successfully defended the America's Cup.
With Vanderbilt as captain and Burgess in the after guard to tend his brother's revolutionary duralumin mast and rigging, their Enterprise handily defeated three other Cup contenders and then Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock V in 1930; their Rainbow (designed with Henry Gruber) beat two of the older contenders and T. O. M. Sopwith's Endeavour I in close Cup competition in 1934; and their welded-hull Ranger (designed with Olin J. Stephens), "far and away the fastest all-around Class J sloop ever built" and probably "the fastest racing yacht of all times", easily defeated Sopwith's Endeavour II in 1937.
Burgess also designed R. Buckminster Fuller's three-wheeled, bullet-shaped Dymaxion car based on reduced air flow in 1933 and antisubmarine devices for the navy during World War II.
He died at Hoboken while studying damage control for the navy at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He is buried at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Burgess in many ways typified the inventor who bridged two technological ages by marrying the aerodynamic features of sail and aviation in his yachts and seaplanes. Ignoring the accusations of his all-sail critics that he employed too many modern devices and mechanic-crewmen on his Class J yachts, he applied modern metals, air flow principles and water tank tests with models in the design of over 2, 000 superior yachts. Even at the beginning of his career in yachts building, design, and construction of yachts, as well as commercial vessels in the Marblehead-Boston area, Burgess demonstrated a great ability for experimentation and creation of impressive, fast vessels, such the Sonder and Q and R Universal Rule class yachts, the largest five-masted sailing schooner ever built, the "Jane Palmer" (1904), and fast fishing schooner named "Elizabeth Silsbee" (1905). Burgess' another great achievement in his ability to apply successfully his knowledge of the sea to naval "hydroaeroplanes" (seaplanes), first with pontoon floats for land planes, then with the D-1 flying boat (1913), and, last but not least, his revolutionary delta-shaped, swept-wing tailless design into the Burgess-Dunne seaplane, earning him the 1915 Collier Trophy for that year's "greatest progress in aviation. " Between 1930 and 1937 he created three America's Cup winning J-Class yachts, "Enterprise", "Rainbow" and 'Ranger" (the latter in partnership with Olin Stephens). Burgess also known for constructing the R. Buckminster Fuller's three-wheeled, bullet-shaped Dymaxion car based on reduced air flow in 1933 and antisubmarine devices for the navy during World War II.
Burgess inherited his father's mechanical instincts and love of the sea and poetry and hoped one day to emulate the father's accomplishments in yachting.
Quotations: "With a restless mind that was attracted by almost any sort of engineering problem" , he fell under the spell of aviation in 1909, when a Wright brothers plane flew over the New York hospital in which he was recovering from a major operation.
Something of "a remarkable and lovable character", wiry and mustached, Burgess as a young man reputedly stood on his head without using his hands to recite his friend A. C. Swinburne's ballads and even late in life followed his father's habit of turning a double somersault on the deck of his winning yacht as it crossed the finish line.
Quotes from others about the person
"Poetry was the foundation of accomplishment, he contended, and it carried him to his love of the wind and the sea".
Described as "a genius in every sense of the word", a "jack of all trades in which mechanical skill counted", with "hazy, but brilliant conceptions".
His first wife, Helene Adams Willard (1901), died after one year of marriage, while his second, Rosamund Tudor (1904), bore him two sons, Edward and Frederick Tudor and a daughter, Tasha Tudor, before the marriage ended in divorce (1925). In 1925 he married Elsie Janet Foos; they had two daughters, Ann and Diana. Their marriage ended in divorce (1933). Two other marriages followed, to Anna Dale Biddle (1933) and Marjorie Gladding Young (1945).
yacht designer
yacht designer
architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor Burgess was friends with Buckminster Fuller and helped him in designing and building his aluminum Dymaxion car.
poet, playwright, novelist
