Born in 1909 in the Philippines to a United States Army officer, the only constant in Captain Robert P. Beebe's early life was his interest in boats. After he graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1931, Beebe's naval career included serving as a navigation officer on the aircraft carrier USS SARATOGA during World War II and serving as the executive officer of the carrier USS SITKOH BAY during the Korean War before accepting a post in the Alaskan territories as an intelligence officer in 1954. In 1958, Captain Beebe accepted his final posting to the United States Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, where he stayed until his retirement in 1961. Captain Beebe worked as an amateur yacht designer throughout his naval career and contributed extensively to Rudder, Yachting and other maritime publications. His early work in the 1940's and 1950's consisted of mainly traditional craft, especially sharpies and canoes. At his retirement in 1961 he turned to yacht design full-time, first working on a boat for himself: a long range powerboat capable of going from one cruising ground to another in comfort, "with speed and dispatch." The result was the revolutionary PASSAGEMAKER, launched in 1963 in Singapore. With nearly 60,000 cruising miles on PASSAGEMAKER, Captain Beebe wrote Voyaging Under Power, published in 1975. It is a discussion of his design principles and an account of his worldwide travels on PASSAGEMAKER. His ideas proved so popular that as a result, he was able to work full-time designing passagemakers for clients all over the world. While Captain Robert P. Beebe died in 1988, his design theories continue to influence naval architects to this day.