Again I can't rate this production, but I do notice that Boris Karloff and Torin Thatcher are both in it. It sounds promising. Moreover, if I'm right about the subject matter it must have been a very interesting sea story - a tragedy.
If you are a student of maritime history, between 1900 and 1918 there were many major ship disasters at sea and even in major cities. These include:
1900 - a fire that engulfed three German steamships in Hoboken, New Jersey, and killed nearly 500 people (mostly crew members) who got trapped in the boats;
1904 - the death of 1,021 men, women, and children on the steamboat, GENERAL SLOCUM, near North Brothers Island off the Bronx and Queens, in a fire that engulfed that excursion vessel;
1912 - the Titanic disaster (1,517 lost), and (later that year) a Japanese steamer sank killing another 1,000 people - for some reason few have written about this second tragedy;
1914 - the Emperess of Ireland is sunk in a collision in the St. Laurence River at night, with the loss of 1,012 people (most were sleeping passengers - in fact more passengers were lost on the Empress than on the Titanic!). Later that year a German U-Boat sinks the British cruisers Hogue, Aboukir, and Cressy with a combined death toll of 1,400;
1915 - the Lusitania disaster (1,198 lost), and the capsizing of the excursion steamer Eastland in the Chicago River with the loss of 812 people;
1916 - the Allied troopship Provence is torpedoed in the Mediterranean, with the loss of 3,300 men. Three British battle cruisers (Queen Mary, Indefatigable, and Invincible) are sunk with nearly 3,500 men lost at the battle of Jutland.
By the time the Great War ended the public really was accustomed to huge death tolls in shipwrecks. But while there were several interesting ship disasters between the two world wars, none really reached the loss column that the ones I listed above did.
One ship that was lost captured public attention in 1928. This was the S.S. Vestris, which traveled from Latin America to the U.S. It had played a small role in an earlier tragedy - the disappearance of the collier, U.S.S. Cyclops, in 1918, as one of the last vessels to see the Cyclops before it vanished. But nothing had happened since then.
The Vestris was caught in a hurricane in 1928 off the Virginia capes. It was the first major ship disaster that was reported not only in the newspapers, but on radio - so the effect was far greater than one could imagine on the public. As Frederick Allan says in his social history, ONLY YESTEDAY, judging from the public horror one would have thought the Vestris was the worst shipwreck of all time.
Allan was right - although the loss of life for a small steamer was awful (about 200 lives were lost), it was not on the scale of the Titanic. But he missed something involving media which is important. During the sinking (which was caused by cargo improperly ballasted below decks that helped capsize the ship) a photographer snapped a picture of the passengers and crew struggling to stay upright on that crazy sloping deck. This picture survived, and eventually won the photographer (who survived) a Pulitzer Prize as best news photo of the year. It still pops up in books of classic photographs. It also beats the famous series of photos of the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956 (by nearly thirty years). Those photos also won the Pulitzer Prize.
I'd be very curious about this episode. If it is about the sinking, it is probably the only time that tragedy was on television or any media after 1928. And I wonder what Karloff was doing on it. His character is "Dr. Pierre". Is he the ship's doctor, or is he a passenger?
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