Gunbearer Part One — Jan Merlin

A Yao tribesman, Sidi Mubarak Mumbai, trekked for many years with legendary British explorers on dangerous safaris into the Dark Continent.

GUNBEARER�"Part One, the first of two books concerning his travels as John Hanning Speke's gunbearer is a unique diary of East Africa's early history. It is a candid account of seeking what was not lost �" an unprejudiced counterpoint to the evasive personal reports constructed by European travelers of the Victorian Era. In this volume about Speke's initial association with Richard Burton in pursuit of the Nile source, the African narrator reveals what has been kept prudishly hidden in former journals by British gentlemen, whose smoldering passions, petty jealousies, and quarrels, endangered their lives and those of their hired bearers among nations older than their own.

Author JAN MERLIN spent time in Africa, tracing the various routes and sites of the journey in Gunbearer. Merlin was born and raised in New York City. At the outset of WW II, he enlisted in the US Navy to serve on three successive ships in the North Atlantic and Pacific Fleets, accumulating ten battle stars before entering Japan's Inland Sea with the first group of Occupation Forces. Upon returning to civilian life, the former torpedoman enrolled in the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater and made his Broadway debut in MISTER ROBERTS. A twice nominated Emmy award winning writer, his professional career as an actor spanned five decades, during which he was starred or featured in numerous plays, several hundreds of live and filmed television appearances, and more than thirty motion picture films made in the United States and abroad. Though known primarily as a “heavy” in films and TV, he may be best recalled for creating his role of Roger Manning in the TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET series and starring in the ROUGH RIDERS series as Lt. Cullen Kirby. In 2009, he received the Golden Halo Award for Actor/Writer from the Southern California Motion Picture Council.