On Board With the Duke: John Wayne and the Wild Goose - Hardcover

Minshall, Bert; Sharon, Clark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0929765133 ISBN 13: 9780929765136

Publisher: Seven Locks Pr, 1992

Synopsis

Here, through an extraordinary combination of text and pictures, is the story of John Wayne, American legend, and his life on board the famed Wild Goose.
The 136-foot ship, a former U.S. Navy minesweeper, was the actor's favorite retreat and proudest possession. During the last sixteen years of his iife, Wayne spent much of his leisure time aboard the yacht cruising off Mexico, the Pacific Northwest and Catalina. The Wild Goose came to dominate his life in a way that only his family and work had done before.
Sharing that life in this entertaining memoir is Captain Bert Minshall, who joined the Goose as a green deckhand in late 1963 and ended up not only as Wayne's last skipper, but as his friend and confidant. It is a story that is at once adventurous and intimate, at times touched with exuberant humor, at times with tragedy.
These pages reveal the legendary Duke: charismatic, fun-loving, occasionally difficult and prone to angry outbursts, a movie star who enjoyed a good laugh or a prank with the abandon of a young boy, a sailor at heart who delighted in his big, aging navy workhorse.
From Captain Minshall's first meeting with Wayne - when the actor calmly and deliberately spit on the deckhand's new deckshoes, claiming it was "good luck" - to the actor's last poignant voyage to Catalina shortly before his death, On Board with the Duke is a revealing look at a complex and fascinating man.

About this title

Review:

Millions of Americans know him on horseback, on foot, and on film. But for John Wayne, much of his real life, for 15 years, was spent on board the Wild Goose, a 136-foot converted World War II minesweeper and sister ship to Jacques Cousteau's Calypso. It was where he relaxed and entertained, where he most enjoyed his roles as husband and father and friend. Bert Minshall, captain on the Wild Goose, became confidant, chronicler, and crutch to Wayne, as well as companion to Wayne's children. In hundreds of still pictures, in home movies taken with his 8mm camera, and in a diary, Minshall recorded day-to-day life aboard the yacht -- interludes with famous guests, as well as routine family activities. Much of that material is included in On Board with the Duke, providing an intimate and revealing glimpse of Wayne and the people around him. -- Midwest Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Seven Locks Pr
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0929765133
• ISBN 13: 9780929765136
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168