Actor Beau Bridges reveals his seafaring connection at The Lone Sailor Awards.
By Janet Donovan
I answer to Beau Bridges, but that’s not actually my real name. My real name is Lloyd Vernet Bridges the III.” Be it Beau or Lloyd, there was no mistaking he is deeply ingrained in the Bridges family history.
In town to receive The Lone Sailor Award, an honor which he shared with his dad Lloyd (in memoriam) and brother Jeff as well as three other recipients, he explains the connection this way:
“My grandpa was the first in our family to go to sea. He was from Liverpool, England— a poor family, 12 kids.
He used to sit on the docks and watch these clipper ships come through. He stowed away on one when he was 16 and they got too far out to sea to take him back so he went around the world seven times in an open boat,” Bridges retells. “Ordered to unfurl the sails in a snowstorm, his hands got so cold that he couldn’t hold on and he fell.
But a line caught him and dropped him gently onto the deck, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.
”
Move forward to the Cuban blockcade…. “When Kennedy put up the Cuban blockade we thought we were going to war against Russia. There was talk of a draft. I was 17 and my dad said, ‘Son, maybe you better pick your branch of the service and join up.’ My dad was doing a series at that time called ‘Sea Hunt.
’ He had met a lot of the Coast Guard on set.” He subsequently received the Honorary Commodore Commission, which is part of the reason why Beau received the award — to honor his father; an ocean away from Liverpool.
