Michael Burns: Michael Burns. Actor: The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell. Michael Burns is a former child actor who went on to a distinguished career as a historian, writer, and college professor. He is now retired and raising thoroughbred horses in Kentucky. He was familiar to television audiences of the early 1960s as the teenage character, "Barnaby West", on the popular Wagon Train (1957) series. After other TV and film credits in...