Creative Notes:
I made this appropriate for Kids and Family genre, shortened dialogue, continued tightening.
The Insatiable Sea
My father, the mutineer, kept the four-masted hulk from sinking, but it was "Horatio Hornblower meets Captain Bligh" for 60 days between American Samoa & Hawaii. Based on a true story about a once famous tall ship fallen to ruin and a small boat sailor hitching a ride home.
Synopsis:
NOTE: The title comes from an actual ancient Egyptian tablet - Astarte and The Insatiable Sea. It ends: "And the sea went back and Seth sat down."
In 1935, after nineteen months as navigator aboard the Cimba (see The Saga of Cimba, International Marine/McGraw-Hill Sailor's Classic, Amazon.com), my father, Russell Dickinson, leaves the voyage in Pago Pago, Samoa, to return to N.Y. and marry the girl he met en route, my mother. Without funds, he signs as Second Mate aboard The Seth Parker, bound for Honolulu. The tall ship was a celebrated broadcast endeavor, owned by Phillips Lord (Wikipedia.com), but abandoned after near destruction in a hurricane, and hastily sold to a Hawaiian concern.
Virtually unseaworthy, the lumbering scow puts to sea under a know-it-all captain, who later proves to be only a former stevedore and able-bodied seaman, afflicted with megalomania. Pegged as a jinxed ship, the Parker attracts the greenest Samoan sailors. Stripped of all usable supplies by the crew towing her out of port, this ship seems doomed to a quick end, assuring a fat insurance check for the pockets of the new owners.
Unbelievable disadvantages: no radio; frozen main engines; bad bilge pumps, scarce food; a vessel that regularly loses strakes, sails, and big chunks of keel to the sea; an outbreak of syphilis due to women smuggled aboard and allowed to sail along; near starvation; lack of fresh water....is all reported in Russ's unpublished manuscript, as well as his confession to his part in the mutiny that brought about their salvation.
The incidents are true, though the backstories of supporting characters have been fictionalized in my script to add drama.
Working class navigator, Russell Dickinson, stumbles into this mess as a disaffected loner, tired of close quarters with another human being after a year-and-a-half at sea with blueblood,Dick Maury, of the Cimba. Ironically, on the Seth Parker, he's thrown in, as virtual leader of twenty strangers in a life and death struggle for which he holds the only key. His co-officers, the First Mate and the Bosun, are somewhat competent older men, but neither can effectively lead and both are embroiled in their own problems. There's a whiff of Shawshank Redemption in this scenario but I haven't capitalized on that in the script because its only a whiff.
Desperate to save their lives, the three junior officers pull guns and lock the drug-addicted captain in the brig when he refuses to allow an SOS for a tow to port. Thanks to a cobbled-together short-wave radio, their plea results in a dramatic rescue.
Russ's chance appearance in American Samoa was the wild card that thwarted a date with Davy Jones.
In 1935, after nineteen months as navigator aboard the Cimba (see The Saga of Cimba, International Marine/McGraw-Hill Sailor's Classic, Amazon.com), my father, Russell Dickinson, leaves the voyage in Pago Pago, Samoa, to return to N.Y. and marry the girl he met en route, my mother. Without funds, he signs as Second Mate aboard The Seth Parker, bound for Honolulu. The tall ship was a celebrated broadcast endeavor, owned by Phillips Lord (Wikipedia.com), but abandoned after near destruction in a hurricane, and hastily sold to a Hawaiian concern.
Virtually unseaworthy, the lumbering scow puts to sea under a know-it-all captain, who later proves to be only a former stevedore and able-bodied seaman, afflicted with megalomania. Pegged as a jinxed ship, the Parker attracts the greenest Samoan sailors. Stripped of all usable supplies by the crew towing her out of port, this ship seems doomed to a quick end, assuring a fat insurance check for the pockets of the new owners.
Unbelievable disadvantages: no radio; frozen main engines; bad bilge pumps, scarce food; a vessel that regularly loses strakes, sails, and big chunks of keel to the sea; an outbreak of syphilis due to women smuggled aboard and allowed to sail along; near starvation; lack of fresh water....is all reported in Russ's unpublished manuscript, as well as his confession to his part in the mutiny that brought about their salvation.
The incidents are true, though the backstories of supporting characters have been fictionalized in my script to add drama.
Working class navigator, Russell Dickinson, stumbles into this mess as a disaffected loner, tired of close quarters with another human being after a year-and-a-half at sea with blueblood,Dick Maury, of the Cimba. Ironically, on the Seth Parker, he's thrown in, as virtual leader of twenty strangers in a life and death struggle for which he holds the only key. His co-officers, the First Mate and the Bosun, are somewhat competent older men, but neither can effectively lead and both are embroiled in their own problems. There's a whiff of Shawshank Redemption in this scenario but I haven't capitalized on that in the script because its only a whiff.
Desperate to save their lives, the three junior officers pull guns and lock the drug-addicted captain in the brig when he refuses to allow an SOS for a tow to port. Thanks to a cobbled-together short-wave radio, their plea results in a dramatic rescue.
Russ's chance appearance in American Samoa was the wild card that thwarted a date with Davy Jones.
Latest Work
-
Script 3 - Linda's 3rd Draft03/05/11
All Work
-
Script 2 - Linda's 2nd Draft02/05/11
Creative Notes:I wrestled with the Novelist Within. She lost. I've added several scenes and cut many more. Trimmed the fat from 125 pages to 113. -
Script 1 - Linda's Original Draft02/03/11
Creative Notes:Two famous vessels sail from the east coast in 1930's, on roughly the same course. Tiny, two-man, Cimba, heading around the world, serialized in Rudder Magazine; and massive, 4-master, Seth Parker, radio broadcast ship of Phillips Lord, chasing celebrity fame. My father, Russ, is the link between these two doomed ships. His true story of what came next: Horatio Hornblower meets Captain Bligh.