The Ship That Died of Shame

I never miss this film whenever it is shown. This mainly down to the fact that my father Haydn Bartlett made the model used in the film. Unfortunately model makers were hardly ever given screen credits (he never got a credit for his model work on "Those magnificent men in their flying machines" either). I have photos of the model at various stages of construction including one it undergoing river tests and also a photo of the real boat. I remember dad saying that Richard Attenborough kept calling him 'darling' when he was on set (much to dads consternation). I always get a lump in my throat when I watch dads model sink under the waves...

Despie my interest in post war films and all things Naval, I have not heard of this film. How I have missed it is beyond me.

George Baker is fantastic as the lead and Bill Owen, known to me as Compo, is a revelation. Richard Attenborough is perfect as always and the roles played by Bernard Lee and Virginia McKenna are small but superb.

I must now read the book to see how the author handled the many strands and ending, which is a little disappointing in the film. Few people in today's Britain understand the stress and strain on on those demobbed at the end of WW2 but I suspect that with growing redundancies of front line troops in Afghanistan, the stories and threads explored in this film will strike a modern chord.

Shortly post WWII, the ex-crew of a Channel patrol boat decide to re-purpose her to smuggling and worse, but the boat has a noble soul.

Attenborough, Baker, Owen, Balcon - what could go wrong? Unfortunately the script decides that the crew clearly explain every single incidence of the ship misbehaving so that there's no sense on mystery at all. The movie just becomes a mediocre 1950's crime caper with an unreliable boat.

Handsome young George Baker doing a posh Royal navy officer doesn't work, unfortunately - Sean Connery would have nailed it, I think.

UK title "The Ship That Died Of Shame" promises a mystery, suspense, and drama. All this film delivers can be had in hack TV shows anywhere since.

The mood at Ealing had evidently changed in the six years since filling your boots from a shipwreck was treated as a bit of a lark in 'Whisky Galore!' Smuggling was for many years viewed benignly in postwar Britain as a romantic game which provided a bit of an adventure for ex-servicemen disoriented by the peace. But the increasingly sordid reality that has recently embraced people smuggling is here shown in all its bleak reality.

Richard Attenborough plays the biggest skunk he'd played since 'Brighton Rock' and the general lack of glamour is underlined by Roland Culver making a very rare appearance without his toupee.

This film addresses the hard lot that ex-servicemen had to face in nigh-on bankrupt post-war Britain; many of them felt of as little use as their now redundant equipment, and some sought excitement and ill-gotten gains by whatever means available.

The Ship in question is a Royal Navy Motor Gun Boat and appears to be (I think) a Fairmile type C. These boats were fast, heavily armed and themselves somewhat vulnerable to attack having little or no armour and containing hundreds of gallons of fuel. They were powered by three large engines and sported between ~2000 and 4000hp depending on the specification.

The idea of using a craft of this sort for smuggling is a bit of a stretch; they use several gallons of fuel per mile and are ruinously expensive to operate, so much so that few of this type survive today. Any smuggling operation using one would have to pay out handsomely just to meet the fuel bills.

Anyway the film is a little darker and has less overt sympathies than many of this period. The cinematography and model work is pretty good and the cast is excellent.

This film is well worth watching, almost a forgotten classic.