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Builder · Mirfield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Steve Burgess

Yorkshire farmer and expedition leader who founded the Cape-to-Cape expedition and commissioned the amphibious Defender 110 that on 8 August 2008 became the first road vehicle to swim the Bering Strait. The vehicle's engineering was carried out by Dan Evans of Protection and Performance; Burgess conceived the vehicle, led the expedition and drove it.

History

Steve Burgess farms Aberdeen Angus cattle at Mirfield in West Yorkshire and is the founder and team leader of the Cape-to-Cape Expedition, a plan a decade in the making to drive from Cape Town to Cape Horn the long way — north through Asia, across the Bering Strait from Russia into Alaska, and down the Americas. The expedition's own team page lists his earlier travels in the mountains of Yugoslavia, the coast of Panama, Ethiopia and the Darién, and his competitive mountain marathon running.

The crossing required a Land Rover that could swim. A 2007 left-hand-drive rest-of-world Defender 110 with the factory 300Tdi was rebuilt from new on a modified galvanised chassis, with outriggers carrying inflatable chambered pontoons, a PTO-driven hydraulic system spinning a phosphor-bronze propeller, a bow plate and rudder, a sunroof escape hatch, Warn winch, external roll cage, 140-litre fuel tank, ARB differential locks and bogie caterpillar tracks for deep snow. The expedition's own account credits that engineering to Dan Evans and his company Protection and Performance rather than to Burgess himself, and says the vehicle would have been unlikely to survive the crossing without Evans's mechanical work aboard — worth recording, because the vehicle is often attributed simply to Burgess.

Having crossed Europe and the full width of Russia in winter, Burgess and Evans launched from Uelen, Russia's most easterly settlement, weathered a storm layover on Little Diomede and completed the roughly 55-mile swim to Wales, Alaska, in the early hours of 8 August 2008 — the first road vehicle to cross the strait. (The expedition's team page gives 2009 for the crossing; every other account, including the Dunsfold Collection's, gives 8 August 2008.) Burgess afterwards kept the Defender in use on his farm, and it was sold at auction in 2025 to Liam FitzPatrick, who passed it to the Dunsfold Collection later that year, where it is preserved with its pontoons, propeller gear and tracks.

Vehicles in this registry (1)

Sources & citations

Maker record updated 2026-09-10T05:40:28.277Z · status: researched