The Fighting Seabees (Republic, late 1940s). Belgian movie poster
Starring John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Dennis O’Keefe, William Frawley, Leonid Kinskey, J.M. Kerrigan, and Grant Withers. Directed by Edward Ludwig.
The Fighting Seabees (Republic, 1944). Window Card
The Fighting Seabees is Republic Pictures’ rip-roaring tribute to the US Navy’s Construction Batallions (C.B.), without whom no plane would ever have gotten off the ground during WW2. John Wayne stars as Wedge Donovan, head of civilian construction company stationed in a pre-Pearl Harbor South Pacific war area.
The Ghost Ship (RKO, 1943). One Sheet
RKO Producer Val Lewton produced some of the eeriest films from the World War II era. This small film, set aboard a ship, stars Richard Dix as a psychopathic captain who controls his ship to the point of killing some of the crew.
A contemporary critic called it “a tepid potboiler of malfeasance and murder on the high seas.”
see also: The Ghost Ship (RKO, 1943). Three Sheet
“Bomb Tokyo with Your Extra Change”
World War II “$1.00 In War Stamps From Every American Will Build the Mystery Ship…Shangri-La” (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943). Propaganda Posters
USS Shangri-La (CV-38) was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers completed during or shortly after World War II for the United States Navy.
Shangri-La was decommissioned in 1971 and sold for scrap in 1988. She remained in the reserve fleet for the next 11 years, and was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 15 July 1982.
She was retained by MARAD for several years to provide spare parts for the training carrier Lexington. On 9 August 1988, she was sold for scrap and later towed to Taiwan for demolition.
The naming of the ship was a radical departure from the general practice of the time, which was to name aircraft carriers after battles or previous US Navy ships.
After the Doolittle Raid, launched from the Hornet, President Roosevelt answered a reporter’s question by saying that the raid had been launched from “Shangri-La”, the fictional faraway land of the James Hilton novel Lost Horizon.
USS Shangri-La (CV-38) on wikipedia
Mystery Ship (Columbia, 1941) movie poster
FBI agents Allan Harper and Tommy Baker are in charge of a group of subversives, spies and saboteurs that the US government is deporting to foreign countries aboard a ship. The deportees attempt a take over… (imdb)
The ship, built at Sparrows Point, MD in 1911, was formerly the packet steamer SS President Warfield for theBaltimore Steam Packet Company, (American steamship line from 1840 to 1962) providing overnight steamboat service on the Chesapeake Bay, primarily between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia.
President Warfield was expropriated in 1942 by the War Shipping Administration for national defense as a transport during World War II. Following the end of World War II, the President Warfield was decommissioned and returned to the War Shipping Administration for disposal as surplus.
The old President Warfield was eventually acquired in early 1947 by Mossad Le’aliyah Bet, a Jewish organization helping Holocaust survivors illegally reach Palestine, then under British mandate.
The former Baltimore Steam Packet and U.S. Navy steamship was renamed Exodus when she embarked from France for Palestine on July 11, 1947, carrying 4,515 passengers. +
The Exodus arrives at Haifa in July 1947
1000 × 767
The Cruel Sea (Gaumont/Rank, 1953) Belgian movie poster
The World War II adventures of a British convoy escort ship and its officers. (imdb)
Starring Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, John Stratton, Denholm Elliott, John Warner, Stanley Baker, Bruce Seton, Liam Redmond, Virginia McKenna, Moira Lister, June Thorburn, Megs Jenkins
Directed by Charles Frend
Coming this week on Maritime Monday:
Tora! Tora! Tora! (20th Century Fox, 1970). One Sheet
Starring Martin Balsam, Soh Yamamura, Joseph Cotten, Tatsuya Mihashi, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore, Jason Robards, Frank Aletter, Leon Ames, and Richard Anderson. Directed by Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda.
World War II film about US Navy dirigibles starring Wallace Beery, Tom Drake, and James Gleason, and directed by William A. Wellman. This film is one of the very few movies except training films to depict this military unit.
U-118 Korvettenkapitän Werner Czygan in the forward hatch
“Tomorrow belongs… TOMORROW belongs…”
German submarine Commander Leutnant Falke on the bridge of U-118
shakedown trials at Kiel; 7 to 14 December 1941
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