RKO had built an expensive ship set for their 1938 production Tragedia sul Pacifico (1939). Val Lewton was given instructions to come up with a film that could use the still-existing set. According to Robert Wise, a longtime collaborator with Lewton, it was this set that gave Lewton the idea for the film. "He would find what we call a 'standing set,' and then tailor his script to the set, whatever it was. That's how he made The Ghost Ship. He walked onto a set and saw a tanker, then cooked up the idea for this ship with a murderous captain." One scholar has suggested that Lewton accepted the assignment in part because, as an amateur sailor himself, the ship captain's behavior mirrored Lewton's own views on how to manage a ship, but also because Lewton saw the plot as a way of criticizing his micro-managing superiors at RKO. The budget, as with all of Lewton's films, was set at $150,000.
Very shortly after its theatrical release in December of 1943, producer Val Lewton was sued for plagiarism by Samuel R. Golding and Fritz Falkenstein, who claimed that Lewton based his script on a 1942 play, A Man and His Shadow, which they had written and submitted to Lewton's office at the time the film was being developed. Despite Lewton's claims that their manuscript was returned unread, the court ruled against Lewton and RKO (a decision upheld at appeal), and this film was withdrawn from circulation. It remained unavailable for viewing for the next fifty years until the copyright was not renewed and it fell into the public domain in the 1990s. RKO paid the authors $25,000 in damages and $5,000 for attorney fees and lost all rights to future income and the right to sell the film to television. Elliot Lavine, a film historian, says that losing the lawsuit deeply disturbed Lewton, leaving him depressed for a significant period of time. It was finally released as part of the Val Lewton Horror Collection DVD set in 2005.
Richard Dix was cast as the captain because he was already under contract with RKO to do a series of "B" pictures for a set fee.
In this film Richard Dix is the Captain of S.S. Altair. In real life, his son Robert Dix would star in the film Il pianeta proibito (1956). In that movie, an expedition is sent from earth to a planet named Altair. And to add to the coincidence, the daughter of the man on the planet is named Altaira.
Some of the fog-shrouded scenes of the ship were taken from King Kong (1933) (also by RKO) when it was moving through the circle of fog before reaching Skull Island.