A Goose Flies Again : John Wayne’s Converted Minesweeper Has Been Refurbished, but It Still Carries Memories of Duke for Its Former Skipper

Bert Minshall, a wide-eyed lad from Liverpool, was a deckhand on John Wayne’s Wild Goose five months before he met the man. Wayne got on the boat in La Paz, Mexico, in the spring of 1964 and summoned the newest member of the crew.

“I was in the salon here,” Minshall recalled on a visit back aboard the 136-foot converted Navy minesweeper. “It was just shake hands and small talk.”

But what Wayne did next was unforgettable.

“I had a brand new pair of Topsiders on,” Minshall said. “He looks at my shoes and goes ptui! I’m astonished. Then he puts a hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Always spit on new shoes for good luck, Bert.’ That was my introduction to the Duke.”

Minshall, now 59, served 16 years on the vessel, where Wayne relaxed and entertained his friends. Only a few were movie stars, such as Claire Trevor, Hugh O’Brian, Dean Martin and Maureen O’Hara. Two of his favorite shipmates were Newport Beach car dealer Chick Iverson and Max Wyman, from whom he bought the boat in 1962.

Although the Wild Goose often visited Santa Catalina Island and Mexico--but never Hawaii--Wayne’s favorite pastime was fishing for salmon in the Pacific Northwest north of Vancouver, Canada.

“He was a fanatic,” Minshall said.

The rest of the time the actor played cards--although contrary to Wayne’s image, Minshall said, “I never saw him play poker.”

He preferred gin rummy or bridge, and occasionally chess. In earlier years he drank brandy on the rocks, then switched exclusively to tequila. But while “a powerful and steady drinker,” Minshall said, “Duke always remained on his feet, coherent and coordinated.”

He also smoked five packs of cigarettes a day.

Minshall rose from deckhand to first mate, then to captain for the last 2 1/2 years until Wayne’s death in 1979, at 71. Then he went on to other captain’s chores, currently for director Blake Edwards and wife Julie Andrews on their 72-foot boat.

A Santa Monica lawyer bought the Wild Goose a week before Wayne died and--according to a legend Hollywood did not try to discourage--became nervous about a certain ghostly presence. The boat fell victim to neglect, all but forgotten in the backwaters of Los Angeles Harbor as worms gnawed away at the wooden hull.

Then early last year the craft was bought by Deil Gustafson, a Minnesota financier and former owner of Las Vegas’ Tropicana Hotel. Gustafson paid the Al Larson Boat Shop on Terminal Island about $200,000--almost twice as much as Wayne paid for it--to replace 136 planks and make the boat seaworthy again.

“That boat is real lucky that he found it,” the boat yard’s Jack Wall said.

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Although Wayne is best remembered for his Western roles, including the Oscar-winning “True Grit,” Minshall says he felt more at home at sea than in a saddle. There is still the command chair in the wheelhouse where Wayne would sit and spend time with the crew.

“He never got seasick,” Minshall said. “But he wouldn’t steer. I never once saw him take the helm.”

Wayne also made about 15 films related to the sea, including “Wake of the Red Witch,” a swashbuckler that gave him an ear infection that bothered him the rest of his life.

In a 1976 interview, he said the greatest disappointment of his life was missing an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy by one position.

Wayne was content with the Wild Goose’s relatively Spartan navy-like comforts and conveniences. According to Minshall, he once told an overenthusiastic interior decorator he had hired to redo the main salon, “I don’t want my boat turned into a goddamned French whorehouse.”

But Gustafson has modernized it throughout and added a flying bridge over the original wheelhouse. He was told that the project might cost half a million dollars, but when it became clear it would run close to $3 million, he formed a trust, the Wild Goose Yacht Corp., to charter the boat for corporate, personal and charitable purposes.

Wayne kept the boat at the Lido Yacht Anchorage near his home in Newport Beach. Now the boat’s home is behind the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey--available for charter at $900 during the week or $1,200 on weekends.

That’s per hour, whether or not you leave the dock.

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The resurrection of the Wild Goose coincides with the publication of a book Minshall has done with Clark Sharon: “On Board With the Duke/John Wayne and the Wild Goose” (Seven Locks Press, $39.95). The coffee table-type work is filled with photographs, anecdotes and Minshall’s insights of Wayne, and poignantly traces his 15-year fight with cancer.

“He treated me like one of the family,” Minshall said. “He could trust me with the kids. I looked after the three children. That was the main job for me. I loved every minute of it.”

Minshall described the children as “pint-sized cyclones.” Aissa, Ethan and Marisa were the offspring of Wayne’s third and last marriage, to Pilar, a former Peruvian film actress.

Asked why Wayne couldn’t look after his own children, Minshall said, candidly, “Oh, he was too old for that. He’d be on board, but it gave him a chance to relax, play bridge, go over his scripts. Occasionally, he’d dive off the stern, then say, ‘. . . , it’s cold,’ stay in the water two minutes and get back on the bridge.”

On typical outings to Santa Catalina Island, the Wild Goose would moor in White’s Cove, where Minshall would swim with the children and drive the water ski boat. Once, at Acapulco, he was towing the youngest, Marisa, then 8, on a small plywood sled he mad made, with the other children and a friend in the ski boat with him.

Suddenly, they heard a voice roaring from the Wild Goose, “I’m gonna shoot four people if Marisa gets hurt on that thing!”

Minshall cooled it.

“The next day I’m mopping the deck outside his stateroom. He steps out and says, ‘Oh, by the way, Bert, I want to apologize for losing my temper yesterday.’

“ ‘I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, sir.’ ”

“ ‘Well, I do worry about it because I like you very much.’ ”

All of Wayne’s friends called him Duke, from his football days at USC as Marion (Duke) Morrison.

But for Minshall, “It was always ‘sir’ or ‘Mr. Wayne.’ I was at the house one day and he said, ‘Call me Duke when you’re off the ship.’ I still found it hard. Even after 16 years I was in awe of the guy.”

Minshall said Wayne’s most disarming feature was his baldness, usually concealed by a cap or a toupee he hated to wear.

“The impact of his personality was undeniable,” Minshall said, “(but) I thought it was surprisingly human of John Wayne to be bald. He could be a little grouchy, like anybody else. Near the end he was very short-tempered.”

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On that Mexican voyage in 1964, Wayne tried water skiing while the Wild Goose was anchored in Baja’s Coyote Bay. Minshall remembered that Wayne labored to get up on the skis, and that afterward he was breathing heavily.

“A coughing attack came over him,” Minshall said. “He’d been coughing a lot since coming aboard. . . .”

Wayne never water skied again. In the fall of ‘64, he was found to have cancer and had a lung removed. Later, after regaining much of his strength, Wayne and Minshall tried scuba-diving off Catalina.

“He was having trouble breathing, coughing a lot,” Minshall said. “We both jump off the back end of the boat and go down 12 or 15 feet, looking for abalone. I could see he was having problems. He goes back to the surface and I follow him, and he tears his mask off and says, ‘Goddamn it, I’ll never have any more fun.’ That was the last time he went diving.”

Wayne’s last trip on the Wild Goose was to Catalina on Easter weekend of 1979. Returning to Newport, he told Minshall, “Thanks, Bert, I had a nice time.”

Minshall never saw him again. Two months later he died. Last week Minshall toured the refurbished Wild Goose at Marina del Rey, pointing out changes and additions, allowing that the new flying bridge “can help with maneuvering” but that he was not totally at ease with “all this modern stuff” that Wayne disdained.

Photos and portraits of Wayne are all over the boat. The memories flood back, like the tide: a rollicking visit in Mexico by Lee Marvin, both actors “roaring with laughter” . . . the steward who threw Capt. Pete Stein overboard when Stein fired him . . . Stein’s alcoholic peccadilloes excused by Wayne, who said, “I don’t trust a guy that doesn’t drink.”

If Gustafson has refined the Wild Goose somewhat beyond’s Wayne’s taste, Minshall says, “I commend the guy for saving the boat. I’m happy that it’s still afloat.”