Burgess, William Starling

William Starling Burgess was born in late 1878 in Boston into a wealthy family of shipbuilder Edward Burgess (shortly afterwards creating Puritan , Mayflower and Volunteer yachts ^[2] ) and natural scientist Carolina Louise (Kitty) Burgess. William early left an orphan: when he was 12 years old, his father died of typhoid fever , and his mother died a few months later from pneumonia . William grew up in a family home, and many of his father's colleagues participated in his training as a design engineer. After graduating from school in 1897, he entered Harvard . At the beginning of the Spanish-American War, Burgess interrupted his studies at the university, joining the Navy as a volunteer, where he served as the foreman-gunner on the Prarie ship. Then he returned to study, but in the last year, in 1901, he unexpectedly left the university again and opened the yacht club and brokerage office of W. Starling Burgess & Co. in Boston. ^[3] . In the same year he married Helen Adams-Willard. However, the very next year, Helen committed suicide. After that, Burgess went to England for some time, where he continued his education in the field of shipbuilding and made useful contacts ^[4] .

At the age of 16, William Burgess designed a new model of recoilless machine gun. In 1901, while studying at Harvard University, he designed the groundbreaking 52-foot racing yacht Outlook (this model, a sloop - dash designed by Burgess for his friend Henry Higginson, won the Challenge Cup for the Quincy Yacht Club the following year, and in in total, she won seven victories in seven races in which she participated in her career ^[4] ). In the early 1900s, Burgess also took an active part in the creation of new models of racing boats, and his Mercedes for some time was a champion in this discipline ^[2] . Already in the first year of work W. Starling Burgess & Co. This company has developed 42 ship models. In 1902, the Little Haste 21-foot cabin sloop was built, winning the East West Championship; in 1904, the 56-foot Corouthian die- design of Burgess won the Continuous San Francisco Challenge Cup. ^[4]

In 1904, Burgess married a second time - to Rosamund Tudor-Higginson. The couple built a house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, near the new Burgess shipyard. The designer was greatly impressed by the flight of the Wright brothers in 1903, and in subsequent years, along with the design of ships, he became interested in aircraft design. By 1909, Burgess had built his own aircraft - one of the first motor vehicles heavier than air to fly to New England . He founded his own aircraft manufacturing company ^[2] , and his Burgess-Herring A aircraft became the first commercial model manufactured in New England and the first American model sold abroad ^[3] . Burgess himself began to pilot airplanes and became one of the first pilots to take off and land on the water. In 1915, for the Burgess-Dunne model with a pushing propeller , swept rear wings and no tail, he was awarded one of the most prestigious awards in the field of aviation - ^[2] . During the years of World War II , Burgess's company produced dozens of aircraft for the US armed forces ^[3] , but financial difficulties forced him at the end of 1915 to sell the production to Curtiss ^[4] .

After the war, Burgess returned to shipbuilding. ^[2] In 1920, the brokerage bureau Burgess and Paine began work in Boston, where in the same year a new sailing equipment was developed for the Vanitie sloop, which almost won the American selection for the America's Cup. In the mid-1920s, Burgess divorced his second wife and entered into a third marriage, this time with Elsie Foss. In 1925, the design and brokerage bureau Burgess & Morgan was opened, where in a short time about 150 models of yachts were created - mainly of the Atlantic class ^[4] .

In 1928, Burgess moved to New York . There he designed the advanced models of the Niña and Advance staysail yachts, and in 1930 Burgess designed the Resolute yacht to defend the America's Cup. The design of this model was distinguished by light duralumin mast and racks. In 1934 and 1937, Burgess designed two more yachts to defend the America's Cup - Rainbow and Ranger (the latter with the participation of Olin Stevens). In the same years, he designed the experimental Dymaxion car for Buckminster Fuller . In 1935, Burgess, whose attention was drawn to the technical possibilities offered by the use of aluminum, joined the recently created Aluminum Company of America , in which he participated in the development of corrosion-resistant alloys, which were later used in shipbuilding ^[2] .

By the end of the 1930s, Burgess divorced his fourth wife, Nanny Dale-Biddle, and began to look after his secretary and assistant Marjorie Gladys Young, who later became his last, fifth wife ^[4] . During these years, Burgess, most of his life suffering from stomach ulcers and from constant pain addicted to morphine , managed to find a suitable treatment, and the subsequent period became one of the happiest and most productive in his life ^[3] . However, paying substantial alimony to the four ex-wives dealt a severe blow to his financial condition. In 1944, the designer suffered an extensive heart attack and in March 1947 died of a repeated heart attack ^[4] .

In 2013, the name of William Starling Burgess was included in the listings of the US National Sailing Hall of Fame ^[2] .

• Llewellyn Howland. No Ordinary Being: W. Starling Burgess: Inventor, Naval Architect, Poet, Aviation Pioneer, and Master of American Design. - David R. Godine, 2014 .-- ISBN 978-1567925265 .

• Burgess, W. Starling - 2013 Hall of Fame . The National Sailing Hall of Fame . Date of treatment July 27, 2019.