Down to the Sea in Ships (1922)

One of the TCM spotlights this month is remakes. Every Monday they'll be running an older version of a movie followed by the remake. This first Monday has been seeing pairs where the first movie is a silent, followed by a talkie remake. (Well, technically, at least one of them isn't quite a remake, just a movie with the same title since the Errol Flynn Sea Hawk is not the same as the silent version.)

With that in mind, I noticed that FXM has the 1949 Richard Widmark version of Down to the Sea in Ships running tomorrow at 6:00 AM. I blogged about that earlier this year, and mentioned that it shared its title with a 1922 silent Down to the Sea in Ships that has a completely different story. (The title is a Biblical reference, to the Book of Psalms.) The silent version is in the public domain and has been available on Youtube, and is also on a DVD release, so I recently watched it to do a post here on it.

Marguerite Courtot plays Patience Morgan, a young woman in New Bedford, MA in the mid-19th century who is the son of Quaker and retired whaler Charles Morgan (William Walcott). She's in love with Thomas Dexter (Raymond McKee), a college graduate, who is opening up a factory in town. He wants to marry her, but Dad says no. His daughter is going to marry a Quaker, which is no matter to Dexter since he can convert. But more importantly, Dad wants his daughter to marry a whaler, which Morgan definitely isn't.

Meanwhile, nasty Siggs has a scheme to bilk Morgan and use the ships to search for gold rather than whales. And when he sees Patience, he falls in love with her and vows he's going to marry her. Of course, Dexter is still in the way, so Siggs has his underlings get Dexter good and drunk and then put him on the next whaling boat out of New Bedford. Also winding up on the board is Morgan's granddaughter and Patience's niece Dot dressed as a boy (Clara Bow in an early role), and her friend Jimmie. Dexter and Dot's disapperances are explained by saying they tok the Oregon Trail west, which might be plausible for the other characters in the movie, but we know better.

Dexter isn't exactly happy about being shanghaied, but he sees that he might have an opportunity to become a true whaler such that when he gets back he can ask for Patience's hand in marriage. Of course, Siggs might get there first. The ship is captained by a fairly bas man, so one of Siggs' henchmen who is also on board leads a mutiny which is part of the plot of getting the ship in order to go looking for gold....

Down to the Sea in Ships is an interesting movie, aided by the fact that apparently some of the whaling footage is about as real as they were going to be able to get at the time. Whaling was dying but hadn't died out completely which made the footage possible; of course, that footage may be uncomfortable to some viewers. For a silent action movie it's quite good, although since silents can be an acquired taste it might not be everyone's cup of tea. Bow is also immensely enjoyable as the one cast member likely to be remembered today.