William H. Tripp Jr


William H. Tripp Jr was an American naval architect who created many popular wooden and later fiberglass sailboat designs. Tripp used the diminutive, Bill, as his usual first name.

Life

Tripp was a native of Long Island, New York. He started as a yacht designer working for Phillip Rhodes, before the Second World War. After returning from his military service in the war he worked for Sparkman & Stevens.
In 1952 Tripp started his own design firm with Bill Campbell, Tripp & Campbell, located in a small office on the seventh floor of 10 Rockefeller Plaza. One of his early wooden boat designs, a 48-foot flush-deck sloop was bulit by German shipbuilder Abeking and Rasmussen designed for Jack Potter of Oyster Bay, Long Island and named Touche. It accumulated a successful race record and elevated Tripp's reputation as a designer, bringing him many commissions for new boats.
Tripp began experimenting with a new material for hull construction and began designing boats for fiberglass, becoming a pioneer in the field.
Tripp was not only a designer, but also an accomplished sailor and sailed many of his own designs.
Tripp was not happy with his professional partnership with Campbell and dissolved the company and formed his own, based in his home town of Port Washington, New York. Campbell found a new partner, Dick Sheehan and carried on as Campbell/Sheehan.
Biographer Ted Jones wrote of Tripp's designs: "Thinking back, I can see many innovations Bill’s fertile imagination introduced. While he did not create the wide beam, shallow draft centerboarder ... he surely refined the type to the extent that he became associated with centerboard racing/cruising boats. The wide transom, low counter design of his boats’ sterns were quite new in the late 1950s, causing many derisive comments among traditionalists, but I don’t hear anyone laughing about the shape of the Bermuda 40’s stern anymore... He designed boats to stay together under the most difficult circumstances. I cannot recall one of his designs ever being dismasted or suffering structural damage at sea."

Death

Tripp died in 1971 in an automobile accident, at age 51. Tripp was killed by a drunk driver on the Connecticut Turnpike. The other driver lost control of his car and crossed the road divider, colliding with Tripp’s Jaguar.
Tripp's son, William H. Tripp III is also a yacht designer. Biographer Ted Jones wrote, "Bill’s son, Billy, was too young at the time of his father’s death to be able to understand what it was that made his father’s boat designs special, yet he has now exceeded his father in this specialized field."

Designs