Summary
If I had been writing Ted Turner's biography (or better still, directing his life as a movie), I would have made Chapter 14 of this book into the prologue.
In a scene reminiscent of the romantic seafaring stories of Joseph Conrad, Mr. Turner's character is defined. The year is 1979. The launch of CNN is months away, poised to challenge television's Big Three - without enough capital to see it through or manpower to keep it going round-the-clock. Mr. Turner and his crew of champion sailors have gathered for Fastnet, a 605-mile race off England's coast. Unpredictably, on the third night, a storm overcomes them. Conditions are rough, visibility poor. Thirty-five foot waves crash against The Tenacious, rocking them dangerously leeward, at times knocking them flat. During the small hours of the morning, when the storm is at its height, Mr. Turner takes the helm. His father once told him, "You are in control of your own situation until you give up. Do not panic or you will die." Unbeknownst to the world, 19 other yachtsmen have already perished at sea. Members of Mr. Turner's crew, huddled together, cold and wet, locked in their safety-harnesses, watch as their skipper, squinting against the howling wind and rain, safely navigates their boat to victory. "The harder it got, the better he was," recalls a crew member. "I think it was his finest moment."See the full content of this document
Extract
From Adventure an Empire
This one sentence encapsulates Mr. Turner's life and is the overriding theme of this remarkable and entertaining book. We see him as a 24-year-old son in Atlanta, saving his father's billboard company from being taken over after his suicide; at the early days of TBS, when he was peeling the stamps off incoming mail and reusing...
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