Down to the Sea in Ships (1949 film)

Elderly whaling ship captain Bering Joy (Lionel Barrymore) walks on crutches and is at the end of his career, based in New Bedford. His cousin Jason visits and they debate his final voyage.

He takes his grandson Jed (Dean Stockwell) to the large but empty family house and gives him some education in preparation for a test. After their bedtime prayer grandpa says it is not so important. The next day he goes with Jed to see Andrew Bush, the bank manager, who once had served under Joy. Jed is setting a one hour written exam to see if he can start as an apprentice ship master. Jed fails the test, but Bush tells his secretary to change the score fom 32 to 70.

He goes to see Jason who controls the ship (The Pride of New Bedford) and is introduced to Mr Lunceford who will serve as first mate. Lunceford has had a college education in marine biology specialising in the whale. Joy is unimpressed.

Joy takes Jed on a whaling expedition in order to teach the young boy real-life values such as honesty, courage, wisdom, fairness and hard work. He asks Lunceford to teach him school subjects. Joy secretly starts learning more from books in the privacy of his cabin, even though he believes in the power of the university of life rather than book-learning. Joy mocks Lunceford when things go wrong.

Jed starts to idolise Lunceford. Jed is overjoyed when it is he who spots the first whale. Lunceford goes out with half a dozen men to search, with Britton as the harpooner. Joy watches from the ship. They are almost caught by the huge tail, but strike with one harpoon and get pulled along. Britton gets his arm crushed in the confusion and Lunceford cuts the rope holding the whale to free him.

A separate boat is sent to catch the whale and succeeds. They strip the whale of its blubber and cut the blubber into small pieces on deck before dropping it in the hold.

Next Jed is allowed on the tiller of the small boat. Joy watches with pride. But a fog bank approaches and they have to cease whaling. However Jed is still out on the small boat with Thatch. Lunceford tries to get Joy to send a second boat to search but Joy realises the stupidity of this and resorts to praying instead. Lunceford disobeys orders and sends a second boat. The boat with Jed is found destroyed - probably struck by a tail. Lunceford saves Jed but is reprimanded and relieved of his duties. He is to be put ashore at the next port - Valparaiso. Jed asks his grandfather to put him ashore at the same time.

Joy has to start manning the small boat instead of Lunceford. He catches a whale off Cape Horn. However Joy becomes sick and passes command to Lunceford, even giving him his cabin. Lunceford wants to head for Montevideo but is encouraged to keep whaling. Joy explains he was born in that cabin in the Bering Sea; hence his name.

Lunceford explains to Jed that Joy always choses what is best for the ship.

In thick fog of Antarctica the crew mistake the echo of a fog horn and their shouting for another ship and almost sails into a wall of ice. But the ship is damaged. Lunceford hangs over on a rope to investigate. The ship is holed below the water line but is resting on a ridge of ice below the water line. Britton goes down and is crushed between the ship and the ice. Lunceford tries to help and his arm is crushed, but they get him back on board. One man is killed. They get ready to abandon ship just as Joy rematerialises from below deck. He starts to organise a patch on the very large hole.

Joy gets even more sick and Thatch catches pneumonia and is unlikely to survive. Jed withdraws his request to be put ashore, just before his grandfather dies.

An entry is placed in the log that he was buried at sea: born on this vessel, died on this vessel. Lunceford agrees to act as Jed's father.

• Richard Widmark as First Mate Dan Lunceford
• Lionel Barrymore as Captain Bering Joy
• Dean Stockwell as Jed Joy
• Cecil Kellaway as Slush Tubbs
• Gene Lockhart as Andrew Bush
• Berry Kroeger as Manchester
• John McIntire as Thatch
• Harry Morgan as Britton
• Harry Davenport as Benjamin Harris
• Paul Harvey as Captain John Briggs
• Jay C. Flippen as Sewell
• Arthur Hohl as Blair (uncredited)
• Dorothy Adams as Bush's secretary

The New York Times February 23, 1949 review by “T. M. P.” praised the film, describing the action with relish and concluding: “Down to the Sea in Ships is a good adventure for man and boy, for it makes some points about character building which can do none of us any harm.”[4]

On December 31, 1948, Variety staff observed that the “first half is becalmed“ in thorough character development, but “In the last hour, picture really shakes out its sails and goes wing-and-winging before the wind. The taking of a whale and the rendering of blubber to oil, the dangers of fog and the menace of a wreck on an iceberg is sturdy excitement that serves as a fitting climax to the story of an old whaler captain, his young grandson and of a young first mate.”[5]

Leonard Maltin gives the film three out of four stars, calling it a “good atmospheric yarn”.[6]

• Lionel Barrymore filmography

• Down to the Sea in Ships at IMDb
• Synopsis at AllMovie
• Down to the Sea in Ships at the TCM Movie Database
• Down to the Sea in Ships at the American Film Institute Catalog