New York Harbor Police Boat Patrol Capturing Pirates (1903) User Reviews

Three Men in a Boat

[JoeytheBrit · 5/10 · 18 May 2009]

It has to be said that the pirates in this film are pretty minor league; there's no creaking galleon, no Jolly Roger, no yo-ho-ho-ing, just three silhouettes frantically heaving on the oars of a tiny rowing boat as a New York Police patrol boat bears down on them. As chase movies go this one is pretty lame. In fact one-sided doesn't even begin to describe it. Despite the obvious mismatch, the rowers do manage to outrace cameramen Edwin S. Porter and Blair Smith at one point, a fact that perhaps illustrates how primitive the movies still were seven years after their birth. Knowing something about the three men's circumstances, who they were and what became of them after capture by the police might have gone some way to making this film a bit more interesting, but as it is it doesn't really grab the viewer's attention.

You Hoist The Jolly Roger. I'm Rowing

[boblipton · 4/10 · 18 August 2019]

Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub, or at least a rowboat. They are pursued by a thirty-foot engine boat, and make their way up to another, then up the lines. Maybe they didn't say "Permission to come aboard" or "Mother, may I?" and that's what makes them pirates.

For hundreds of years, of course, people would steal goods out of trading ships tied up at the dock. Did putting a ship in the equation make them pirates and thus common enemy of all mankind, thieves, or perhaps burglars? I'm afraid I don't know enough about admiralty law to offer an opinion. You'd have to ask the Supreme Court -- Federal, not New York State -- for a decision.

It's also a clunkily photographed movie, as the pursuing ship and rowboat slip over the edges of the frame. Now, that should be a crime.