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Tyrone Power stars in and produced the harrowing 1957 shipwreck tale Abandon Ship.

I’d had a 1957 movie called Abandon Ship in my Q for a while when I finally decided to give it a shot. 

It opens with a closeup of a rusty WW II mine floating in the ocean, then an explosion and fire superimposed, and, finally, flotsam in the water and the sounds of pandemonium. But we see no ship, no crew and passengers fighting for their lives, no sinking liner, all of which screams “cheap, cheap, cheap!”

 Then this text appears: “On the morning of September 27th, the super liner Crescent Star, en route across the South Atlantic Ocean on the first leg of a round-the-world cruise, exploded and sank in seven minutes. There were 1,156 souls aboard at the moment of disaster. In seven minutes, 1,119 perished. 37 survived.”

 I did not have much hope for the next 90-some minutes after the editing 101 opening, but, wow, this movie’s moral posturing really puts you through the wringer.

 Tyrone Power stars as executive officer Alec Holmes, one of the 37 survivors of the world cruise liner. Power was also the film’s producer, which makes one wonder why he would cast himself in the unappealing role of the unflinching officer/demi-god deciding who lives and who dies among the survivors of the mid-Atlantic liner explosion.

Things get much better after the economical opening. The dire situation is made real by Tyrone Power’s intensity. His performance holds everything together, and that must be why he cast himself in the abhorrent role of the man in charge of a crowded open boat on the open sea.

It was not the first time Power tried to prove he was not just a matinee idol. Check out his amazing performance 10 years earlier, in the original Nightmare Alley from 1947. It’s Power’s badge of honor role, showing his desire to be taken seriously as an actor.

The year after he made the uncompromising Abandon Ship, the chain-smoking Power died after suffering a massive heart attack during a sword fight scene with George Sanders in the 1958 movie Solomon and Basheba. He was 44 years old.

Power is absolutely convincing as the officer in charge of the boat of survivors in Abandon Ship.  Surviving with him is his girlfriend, ship’s nurse Julie White (Mai Zetterling). Several other crew members survive, but Power’s character is the highest ranking, uninjued crew member, so assumes command of the small boat that was meant to carry ninepassengers but now has all the survivors, most inside but others taking turns hanging onto the sides of the boat.

As he is driven to make decisions on who goes overboard, you see the weight of responsibility on his face and in his steely demeanor. The dark circles under his eyes seem to grow deeper with each awful decision, conveying the weight of his decisions on his own psyche. Yet, he remains steadfast in his goal to save as many lives as possible by lightening the boat’s load, while others put up good arguments to be humane and keep people aboard.

The situation becomes more desperate when the old salts aboard recognize the signs of a massive Atlantic storm gathering before them.

Having been through a Force 8 gale on a Norwegian tanker a day out from the Great Banks on our way to Liverpool, I recognized what these people were about to go through. 

The stormy ocean is a terrifying place, made worse, of course, by being crowded into a small open boat. I understood the need Power’s character felt to jettison dead weight to be able to survive the walls of water by which the little wooden boat was about to be pummeled.

 Those wounded in the ship explosion went first. Then the elderly and effete – people without the strength or wherewithal to help the boat make the 1,200-mile journey to the African coast. Those doomed to die at sea include a retired opera singer whose children sent her on the world cruise to get her out of their lives. Now she’s really not wanted. But all went over, or were assisted over, with acknowledgment to Power’s character that they were only going or assisting at the point of his gun.

That was an especially important point because, as we learn in the final moments, the movie is based on a true story of an American ship, the William Brown, traveling from Liverpool to the U.S. in 1841. It hit an iceberg 250 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, which took the lives of almost half the 65 passengers and crew. Twelve survivors were jettisoned from the lifeboat on the way to shore and Capt. Alexander Holmes was tried for murder, but received only six months in prison due to the circumstances.

Abandon Ship is a truly harrowing movie. As the survivors are about to be rescued by a steamer, Power’s character looks up and sees all the jettisoned survivors standing at the railing looking down at him. For a moment, we think they have been saved. But, no, he is just being haunted.

The screenplay was written by Richard Sale and based on his 1937 short story “Seven Waves Away” (which was the film’s title in its native England). Sale, a prolific short story writer, also directed the film.

A year later, Sale and his wife Mary Loos brought the New Orleans-based adventure series Yancy Derringer to the small screen on CBS. 

You can find Abandon Ship on Prime Video.