A Wartime Fable

As The Ghost Ship entered production in August 1943, Americans – including the Lewton unit – were fixated on the world war unfolding around them. The daily headlines drew attention to the Allies’ hard-won, incremental progress in Sicily, the Solomon Islands, and along the Russian front. The all-engrossing war effort of the summer of 1943 led to the production of the Lewton unit’s film most clearly informed by the war.

The action of The Ghost Ship takes place aboard the merchant ship Altair as it delivers sheep to San Sebastian, the fictional Caribbean island where I Walked with a Zombie took place. Although the film never mentions the war, oblique wartime references can be found within it. For example, when the Bosun (Dewey Robinson) calls the roll before the Altair leaves port, the First Officer (Ben Bard) comments on one sailor, “He's a Finn, keep an eye on that man, I don't want any trouble aboard ship.” The lone sailor so singled out is a mute known to the crew only as “The Finn” (Skelton Knaggs). The line tumbles past without receiving any notice in the literature on the film, but it refers directly to the war. Finland was allied with Germany during the war, hence the First Officer's concern over potential trouble. While at port in San Sebastian, another minor war reference finds its way into the film when German sailors in the apparently neutral port physically accost the Altair's Trinidadian crew member, Billy Radd (Sir Lancelot).

These references to the war establish The Ghost Ship's wartime context. The film's narrative also speaks to another wartime preoccupation. The film's central plot deals with authoritarianism and most importantly to the moral indifference of the masses to authoritarianism's abuse of the individual. Insofar as America's enemies were fascist dictatorships in Europe and Japan, a film dealing with an authoritarian ship captain's descent into madness and violence inevitably resonated with the times.

Stories of power-mad sea captains abound prior to The Ghost Ship, so Lewton may not have needed a global war against fascism for inspiration. J. P. Telotte sees the film's inspiration in Jack London's The Sea Wolf and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Sharer, the former for providing a similar dynamic between a young man on his first voyage and a disciplinarian captain.