Dixie Carter, Hal Holbrook’s Shared Love of the Sea is Focus of Future Exhibit

For Immediate Release

Dixie Carter, Hal Holbrook’s Shared Love of the Sea is Focus of Future Exhibit

Newport News, Va. - (April 2010) - NEWPORT NEWS – The legend of actress Dixie Carter, who died last week, is tied to her long marriage to Hal Holbrook, and the couple’s shared love of the sea. That love is embodied in Yankee Tar, a 42-foot sailboat that The Mariners’ Museum plans to turn into an exhibit, a tribute to the couple’s sense of adventure.

In 2006, Holbrook and Carter traveled from Beverly Hills to donate their Gulf 40 sailboat to The Mariners’ Museum. Holbrook, who was no casual sailor, made several solo Pacific crossings aboard Yankee Tar. 

The boat in fact paralleled the course of Hal Holbrook’s and Dixie Carter’s relationship. They first met in 1980, a short time after Holbrook bought the boat. When the couple donated the boat in 2006, Holbrook said: “Dixie made every adventure glamorous and great sport.” A photograph of Carter, smiling barefoot in the captain’s chair, her hair windblown, still hangs in the boat’s cabin. A plaque on the wall, a quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay, reads: “Searching my heart for its true sorrow; this is the thing I find to be; That I am weary of words and people; sick of the city, wanting the sea.”

There are also charts, log books and photographs. Drawers stuffed with clothes. A pair of Sperry Topsiders in the closet. Cassette tapes of music by Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Frank Sinatra. Bottles of spice sit on the counter; a kettle rests on the stove. The museum asked the couple to leave their personal effects on board when they donated Yankee Tar. “A visitor can come on and feel like they are really aboard Hal and Dixie’s boat,” said Lyles Forbes, chief curator for The Mariners’ Museum. “That way, it becomes less about the boat, and more about these people cruising around the Pacific."

The sailboat, built in 1964 in Hong Kong, is not currently on public view, but Forbes said a future exhibit is in the planning process. Although much has yet to be decided, Forbes plans to make good use of film footage shot in 2007 aboard the boat. For several days, Holbrook, Carter and several crew members met with filmmakers, reminiscing about their seafaring adventures over the previous 20-some years. Forbes said that footage will be used to create interactive displays. “A museum visitor could choose whether to hear fascinating tales of the couples’ trip to New Zealand, or Tahiti, or Samoa.” 

“It was clear, talking with them about this boat, you could tell that it was special to both Hal and Dixie and that they had shared a lot of good times aboard Yankee Tar,” Forbes said. 

For more information:
Contact: John Warren
(757) 591-7746
E-mail: pr@MarinersMuseum.org 
 

The Mariners' Museum, an educational, non-profit institution accredited by the American Association of Museums, preserves and interprets maritime history through an international collection of ship models, figureheads, paintings and other maritime artifacts. The museum is open from 10 A.M. until 5 P.M. Wednesday through Saturday, and 12 to 5 P.M. Sunday. It will be closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. For information, visit www.MarinersMuseum.org, call (757) 596-2222 or (800) 581-7245, or write to The Mariners' Museum, 100 Museum Drive, Newport News, VA 23606.

The Mariners' Museum and The South Street Seaport Museum of New York City are partners in America's National Maritime Museum, an innovative alliance recognized by an act of Congress in June 1998 to share collections, exhibitions, educational programs, publications, and other endeavors.