About The Author

Commander Douglas D. Mintline, USNR, is a retired US Navy intelligence officer with over 30 years service.  He has run the operations-intelligence command center on a guided missile destroyer and has sailed through many storms at sea, including aboard ships of other countries’ navies.  

     His service as an intelligence officer spans many areas of the Navy at sea, in the air, ashore, and forward deployed in many parts of the globe.  Included is duty in multiple combat zones he volunteered for to include Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kosovo, and more.  His research, analysis, and reporting have appeared many times on CNN during NATO press conferences and hundreds of times in the US military, US State Department, and NATO intelligence services on-line publications.  

     A native of Michigan where he received a Master’s Degree from Eastern Michigan University, he has lived in Bay View for over 30 years.  Upon arrival in Bay View, he bought, rescued, and restored the former home of Johanna Brotch, Bay View’s first, one, and only female ship owner and her husband John Brotch, Bay View’s most prolific schooner captain.  Between the Brotch’s and Commander Mintline, the house has a professional maritime connection totaling 89 years of its 133 years of existence, the longest by far of any other home in Bay View.  

     A more comprehensive and detailed biography of Commander Mintline appears in both of his books, “A Brother Helps His Sister:  The True Story of William A. Draves, the Schooner Arctic, and the House at 515 East Lincoln Avenue,” and “Bay View:  Town of Lake CAPTAINS!”  which are now on sale on Amazon.com.  All (100%) of the proceeds are to benefit projects on this site pertaining to Bay View maritime history and should these attempts fail, then to the preserved museum ship the SS City of Milwaukee in Manistee, Michigan, that was captained by two and likely three different Bay View lake captains.

     Limited copies of his first book, “The Mintline:  A Storyteller’s Best!” are also available on Amazon.com.  Published in 1998, it is a compilation of 363 of his father’s stories from his 44 years as a sports editor in the golden age of newspapering before television and the internet.  Also included are stories from his participation in General George S. Patton’s Third Army in World War II including the Battle of the Bulge.