Replies

Hi Baggie! I saw your “hint,” so happily slid right on down into that bunny hole you pointed to.

I found some things, but I’m not sure I found everything you are hoping for. So I will gladly share what I did find.

I started with the Skipper, Christopher Sheldon, about whom is quite a lot known.

Christopher Sheldon

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/us/cb-sheldon-76-skipper-in-a-noted-sinking.html
C.B. Sheldon, 76, Skipper in a Noted Sinking
By DOUGLAS MARTINOCT. 29, 2002
“…Christopher Barrows Sheldon was born in Manhattan on Oct. 12, 1926. He attended private schools and graduated from the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru. He earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary but was never ordained. He next earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Madrid.
He sailed from the age of 15 and was taken on by Irving Johnson, the explorer and captain of the vessel Yankee, as a crew member on around-the-world voyage from 1956 to 1958. After the first mate fell ill, Mr. Sheldon got the job.
Mr. Sheldon took pictures on the trip for National Geographic magazine.
In May 1959, he married Alice N. Strahan, a doctor who had served as medical officer on the Yankee….”

IN THIS ARTICLE ANOTHER SURVIVOR, WILLIAM P. BUNTING IS MENTIONED, PROVIDING AT LEAST A TENUOUS CONNECTION TO THE KENNEDY FAMILY:

“…The screenplay was based on a 1963 book about the incident, ''The Last Voyage of the Albatross,'' written by Chuck Gieg, one of the students. Other survivors included William P. Bunting, son of Mary I. Bunting, the president of Radcliffe College.

After the accident, Mrs. Bunting told Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, about Mr. Sheldon, and he offered him a job. He became director of operations for the Peace Corps in Colombia, a distraction he welcomed.
In addition to Ms. Ramsey, he is survived by a brother, John, of South Bristol, Me….”

~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

ANOTHER SURVIVOR IS RICHARD LANGFORD

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1996-02-07/news/9602061059_1_white-squall-richard-langford-albatross

Retired Teacher Recalls Real-life 'White Squall'
Names & faces
February 7, 1996|By Harry Wessel of The Sentinel Staff
“…Richard Langford of DeLand, a survivor of the May 1961 disaster that White Squall is based on, doesn't plan to see the movie.

''I lost a lot of good friends on that trip. I don't need any reminders,'' said Langford, 70, a retired Stetson University English professor. ''I had a number of dreams about it after it happened, and I don't want to instigate that again. It was a traumatic experience for a number of people.’'

Two of the five adults on board, as well as four of the 15 students, died. The dead included Alice Sheldon, a physician, biology teacher and wife of the captain, Christopher Sheldon; and the ship's cook, George ''Spook'' Ptacnik, a particularly close friend of Langford’s.

Langford wrote a book-length manuscript on the voyage in 1961 as well as a first-person account of the disaster that appeared in Reader's Digest in October 1961. The manuscript was published in serial form 25 years later in the DeLand Sun News….”
[For those who might wish to obtain his version of the story, here is a link to Amazon for the Oct 1961 Readers Digest:

https://www.amazon.com/Readers-Digest-October-1961-RD/dp/B00F2RUX6C

Here is a link to the news article:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1996-02-07/news/9602061059_1_white-squall-richard-langford-albatross. ]

THE WESSEL ARTICLE CONTINUES AND STATES THAT THE LANGFORD IS THE MOVIE CHARACTER MCRAE:

“…. He had been reading in bed when the squall hit and was trapped below deck by rushing water.

''Later, some of us estimated that I had been carried down over 40 feet inside the doomed ship before I got out of her,'' he wrote.

Langford had nothing to do with the movie. Although some of the characters' names in the movie stayed the same, Langford's did not. Actor John Savage plays an English teacher named McRae…”
~ ~. ~ ~

CHUCK GIEG and TOD JOHNSTONE WERE AMONG SURVIVORS

https://people.com/archive/terror-at-sea-vol-45-no-7/

Terror at Sea

DAN JEWEL February 19, 1996 12:00 PM

“…For a brief period after their rescue, the survivors were celebrities. They were met by reporters upon their arrival in Tampa, and their adventure was featured in LIFE magazine. A year later, crew member Chuck Gieg, then 18, wrote a book about the experience, The Last Voyage of the Albatross. By that time the survivors had gone their separate ways. For the most part, they didn’t speak to each other for 35 years—until Disney turned the incident into a movie. White Squall, starring Jeff Bridges, Scott Wolf and Balthazar Getty, opened Feb. 2, and though it takes liberties with their story, it has forced several of the survivors to re-examine the events of that day and their impact….”

“…. The boys were ready pupils. “It was every fantasy I could think of,” says Gieg, who is played in the movie by Wolf. “Like jumping into a pirate movie.” Tod Johnstone, who, like Gieg, lived in Connecticut, and is portrayed by Getty, says that he was having family trouble and thought “this would give me a feeling of self-worth.…”

“…. the disaster continued to haunt them all. “I was really angry at my friends who died and left me,” says Gieg. “So I shut down. My family was supportive, but I wasn’t letting people in.”

He spent years moving around the country until, “to shake myself up,” he enlisted as a Marine and worked as a combat correspondent in Vietnam. Doing his best to escape too, Sheldon soon signed on for four years as the first director of the Peace Corps in Colombia. “I wanted to get [the sinking] out of my mind,” he says. “But it stays with you.”

Seeing the film made after all these years has helped the survivors, they say. Oddly, what has been especially helpful, says Gieg—who, along with Sheldon, served as a consultant on the film—is its highly fictionalized final scene, in which Bridges, as the skipper, is accused of negligence at a Coast Guard tribunal until his students rally around him. In reality, says Gieg, the hearing was strictly routine….”

“…. Today, Gieg, who has never married, has learned to be content with his solitary life as a business consultant on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket. Living near the sea, he says, “I love waking up in the morning. I can’t wait to get up and get started.” Sheldon, too, has found some peace. Being involved with White Squall, he says, “has been therapeutic. It gets me out and talking about it.”

To Johnstone, however, now an artist in Stonington, Conn., the skipper’s immediate desire to put the episode behind him left him wounded. “The real tragedy,” he says, “is that none of us have talked to each other since ’61. Skipper was like my surrogate father. I felt hurt for years that he never followed up to find out where we were.”

But even that resentment is fading. Nine years ago, Johnstone took his wife on a cruise that crossed the site of the squall. As the cruise ship passed over the approximate spot where his crew-mates had died, Johnstone tossed a wreath off the deck…”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
For those who might be interested in a fairly technical discussion of the causes of the loss of the Albatross, this might be interesting:

http://www.oceannavigator.com/July-August-2013/July-August-2013-Issue-211-White-squall/

July/August 2013 Issue 211: White squall
Jun 20, 2013
BY DAVID BERSON

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Obit for Christopher Sheldon

http://heavenslie.com/My%20Obits/Christopher%20Sheldon.htm
Age: 76
Summary: captain of the sailing ship Albatross who took 15 students, 2 teachers, a cook and his wife on a field trip in 1961 when the ship was hit by a freak storm and sank with Sheldon, 11 students and the teachers surviving and inspiring the movie White Squall with Jeff Bridges portraying Sheldon.
Cause of Death: Pancreatic cancer
Born: October 12, 1926
Died: October 5, 2002
Location: Stamford, Connecticut

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Work is being done on the Reddit Q boards also:
https://www.reddit.com/r/greatawakening/comments/8umfh0/white_squall_reference_cracked_from_q1621/
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
More on artist Johnstone’s story

http://articles.courant.com/1996-02-02/news/9602020045_1_white-squall-alice-sheldon-albatross

“…. The truth is that a 17-year-old Stonington youth named Tod Johnstone was at the helm when the violent storm, called a ``white squall,'' hit that day.

The truth is that Johnstone has had to live the past 34 years with the nagging question of responsibility.
The movie ``White Squall,'' which opens today, is not always faithful to the truth, but there is enough truth in it to have helped Johnstone come to terms with his demons.
Johnstone, 52, an artist who runs the Anguilla Gallery in Stonington, worked as a technical adviser on the film and had a bit part playing his own father. Last week, he saw the movie for the first time.
``I know I was not 100 percent responsible for what happened,'' he said. ``But I have felt guilty because I was the one steering the boat. It's like if you are driving a car and you get into an accident and people are killed.
``A lot of time has been spent analyzing what happened that day, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it,'' he said. ``The only thing that could have prevented it was being 2 or 3 miles away.''
The brigantine Albatross set sail from Mystic in June 1960 with a crew of five adults and 13 teenagers. The youths were mostly troubled or misdirected, and the ship was intended to be a floating tough-love classroom….”

“…. The sad irony is that none of the survivors talks to anyone,'' Johnstone said. ``In the movie, there is all this stuff about closeness and bonding. Yet, in reality, this group elected not to talk to each other. In 34 years, the crew had not said boo to each other.'' Sheldon said he hopes the movie will bring about a reunion of the entire surviving crew.
Both Sheldon and Johnstone said the movie has proved cathartic.
``I've always sort of held in talking about it,'' Sheldon said. ``You always wonder what you could have done to prevent it -- could you have prepared the ship differently? But I've come to learn that kind of thinking is rather useless. The movie now has me talking about what happened freely. It has become my personal psychoanalyst.''
``The story is now told; it's out there,'' Johnstone said. ``Psychologically, I've carried all this luggage for a long time, and that's not a good idea. Now I have the monkey off my back.’'

~ ~ ~ ~

Another link:

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/10/nyregion/the-day-the-albatross-went-down.html

The Day the Albatross Went Down
By JACQUELINE WEAVERMARCH 10, 1996
~ ~ ~ ~
I did some searches for “Gil Martin” and came up with some possibles on Linked In, but had little data to work with to narrow it - plus I don’t do “Linked In”

Gil Martin
From Linked In:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gil-martin-83603530
Have no idea if any of these are the Gil Martins we are looking for.
There is a marriage counselor/reserve deputy/chaplain
Also Customer service, an engineer at Vanderweil Engineers, a CEO of Martin Home Furnishings, and EHS Manager at GOOGLE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

Plus 178 more “Gil Martins” listed:

https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dir/gil/martin

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I was not able to find anything on Frank Beaumont nor Dean Preston either.

Note: I used the < pre > and off thing, which worked! However, I have no clue why the right margin went way east to New York.