brutalbeast

The Brutal Beast is the work of local yacht designer, naval architect, and aircraft pioneer W. Starling Burgess, who designed it as an instructional vessel for his children. The name not only described the way in which the catboat sailed, but was more directly derived from how a hostile neighbor usually referred to the Burgess's dog. Still, as a means of teaching sailing, a Brutal Beast seems to fall into the same category as throwing kids in the water to teach them to swim. They are very beamy (one local veteran, Elliot Rowand, recalls his as being "as wide as it was long"), but they are also low to the water, and they have an enormous sail for their size (both mast and boom are significantly longer than the boat itself). It took me a whole season to get the hang of sailing one without taking on water over the side.

By 1927 Brutal Beasts had become the sail-training vessel of Marblehead (and eventually elsewhere, see photos below). Bob Seamans (later a prominent aerospace engineer and yachtsman) recalled “we'd go charging around the harbor racing and bumping into the big boats at anchor, and that's what we did in the summer.” For at least twenty years, Brutal Beasts retained their preeminence as trainers and racers in Marblehead (a list of winners of the annual regatta, which used Brutal Beasats up into the early 1950's, can be found [ http://www.pleon.org/page/3296/ ]here). I have not been able to determine exactly when they fell out of use. I had never seen one in person, until my grandfather acquired our current Brutal Beast, in 1994.

[This picture is of a fleet of Brutal Beasts sailing in Lake Ontario, affiliated with the Royal Canadian Yacht Club in Toronto. Paul Henderson, at the helm in the right hand picture, went on to own one of the first five Nonsuch 30s. He named it "Brutal Beast" after his boyhood trainer]

[Two more pictures from about 1939 of Beasts rigging up at the Corinthian Y.C. in Marblehead. The boy in the left-hand photo is my great-uncle, A.L. Putnam. The girl with the braids in the right hand picture may be my grandmother, Anne L. (Putnam) Seamans. Photos by Sam Chamberlain]

The boat we have (sail number 105) came to us with nothing but a hull, a centerboard, and sail. No mast, no boom, no standing rigging, no tiller, and no rudder. She was so dried out that daylight was visible through every seam in her bottom. Her story, as we have come to understand it, runs like this: In the 1980'a, a small fleet of Brutal Beasts was brought to Marblehead to participate in a commemorative regatta. Perhaps this was in honor of the 1987 centenary of the Pleon Yacht Club, which had been a major center of Brutal Beast racing from the twenties through the forties (and beyond? We don’t know). The fleet had been built (probably in 1985, judging from our boat's serial number) by the Pert Lowell company (makers of Town Class sloops as well) for an inner city sailing program. Although well-intentioned, the choice cannot have worked out very well for the program in question. The reproduction Beasts were very heavy for their size, and made out of solid mahogany, which had been varnished. To be properly cared for, each vessel would have required many hours of labor every spring, before even going in the water.

Judging from #105, they spent most of the next decade years in storage, before being sold off one by one (this was largely through the agency of Frank Scully, a two-time Brutal Beast champ for Marblehead, who died not long afterwards). #105, arriving in the condition described above—completely unfit to sail (or even float)—remained in storage for another eleven years, before we began restoring her in the summer of 2005. For the each summer since, re-christened LADY she is fully rigged and sailing, the only Brutal Beast actually in local waters that we are aware of.

She sits at mooring in 25 feet of fresh water that is fed from the same aquifer that Poland Springs uses to fill their commercial bottles for sale. We have not renamed her for fear of bad luck. We sail her with the gunther rigging rather than the marconi, which stays suspended along our garage ceiling. We had 22 family members of all ages visiting over the summer and Tortuga was perfect for budding sailors to learn.

Tortuga is a beautiful boat and clearly in prime condition. Apparently she was restored for a brief appearance in a John Travolta movie. Built in the 1940's, (which probably means she too was built in Newbury, MA by the Pert Lowell co.) she has the foredeck characteristic of Maine Beasts, which must come in handy, since our beast has a nasty tendency to augur into waves and take water over the bow.

Another recently restored beast belongs to Mr. John DiVito of Quincy. His ten year project finally achieved fruition with a launching in June of 2009. You can see footage of his beast under sail [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ItHXScq90 ]here.

Lastly, I have recently heard from a gentleman named Sturgis Haskins, who says is the donor of the two museum specimen Beasts we are aware of (at the Penobscot Bay Museum, pictured above) and at the Peabody Essex Museum here in Salem. He is also still an owner. I still need to get back to him.