Down to the Sea in Ships

1922 AdventureDrama 85 minutes Directed by Elmer Clifton

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About Down to the Sea in Ships

Quaker captain William Morgan (William Walcott) of New Bedford will let his daughter Patience (Marguerite Courtot) marry only a Quaker whaler. He refuses Allan Dexter (Raymond McKee). Samuel Siggs (J. Thornton Baston), passing as a white Quaker, marries into the family to get the ships for a gold run. Dexter is drugged, tied, and put aboard a whaler; Morgan's granddaughter Dot (Clara Bow) stows away dressed as a boy. At sea Dexter harpoons a whale, the crew turns on the mate who attacks Dot, and Dexter brings the ship home in time to stop Patience's marriage to Siggs.

Cast & crew

More about Down to the Sea in Ships

Elmer Clifton directed and produced. John L. E. Pell wrote the script. W. W. Hodkinson Corporation distributed it. The premiere was September 25, 1922, at the Olympia Theater in New Bedford; general release followed on March 4, 1923. The Charles W. Morgan was one of the whaling ships used.

Themes

  • A Quaker whaling house in New Bedford
  • An impostor after the ships
  • A stowaway girl on a whale hunt
  • Dexter proving he can work a boat
  • New Bedford
  • whaling
  • Quakers
  • stowaway
  • Clara Bow
  • impostor

Background

The picture uses New Bedford's surviving whaling shores and meeting houses for a story set in the Quaker whaling trade.

Look

A. G. Penrod and Paul H. Allen photographed men fighting whales from small boats. The page on the film notes the risk of that work.

Music

Henry F. Gilbert composed a score and did not receive a credit.

Preservation

Prints survive. A copy is on the Internet Archive and another file is on Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • The title is taken from Psalm 107, verses 23-24.
  • Dot is the child of Morgan's dead son. She wants to be a whaler herself and boards the ship as a boy.
  • James Turfler plays Jimmie, the cabin boy who gets Dot away from Jake Finner (Patrick Hartigan).
  • A 1949 Twentieth Century-Fox film uses the same title and has no story connection to this one.
  • Wikidata lists 83 minutes. The Wikipedia running time is 85.

Scenes

  • Dot hides boy's clothes and stows away on the same ship where Dexter has been left tied.
  • Dexter harpoons a whale, then the crew makes him captain after the mutiny.

Also available

  • Internet Archive (silent-down-to-the-sea-in-ships)
  • Wikimedia Commons (Down to the sea in ships (1922).webm)