Les maîtres de la mer

It's the dawning of the steamship age, and Will Fyffe has plans to make a ship that cross the Atlantic Ocean, faster than any sailing vessel. Uppity seaman Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is enchanted by the idea, and by Fyffe's daughter, who disapproves of the whole nonsense.

I sometimes wonder if Frank Lloyd enjoyed making all these spectacle movies; he had been a specialist in them since the 1918 version of A TALE OF TWO CITIES; he's best remembered for the first version of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. Did he ever yearn to make a small, intimate picture? He could handle dialogue very well. Well, such is the lot of the Hollywood genius. With a cast that includes Alan Ladd in his first credited role, he turns in a solid production.

Lloyd had begun in the movies as an actor in 1913. He directed the first of his 135 shorts and features the following year, and the last 40 years later. He died in 1960, aged 74.

"Rulers of the Sea" is a heavily fictionalized account of the first steam ship to cross the Atlantic and how it came to be. And, as long as you don't expect it to be a history lesson, there's plenty to enjoy.

David Gillespie (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is the first mate on a sailing ship when the film begins. When a man dies aboard, he's disenchanted and wants to give up and get his own ship. Instead, he bumps into John Shaw (Will Fyffe)...a man with a dream of a steam ship able to cross the Atlantic. Previously, Robert Fulton's steam ship took its maiden voyage two decades earlier...but steam ships were only used for local travel as they were considered too unreliable and not powerful enough for cross-Atlantic travel. Togther, GIllespie and Shaw dedicate their lives to making this dream come true and the film ends with this maiden voyage.

There are a few things that make this a less than fabulous movie...such as Fairbanks' on again off again Scottish accent as well as the picture seeming a bit overlong. But on balance, it does manage to get you hooked and is a crowd pleaser. Pleasant and interesting despite the seeming dullness of such a picture.

By the way, if you do watch, look for a young Alan Ladd as a young sailor near the beginning of the movie.

I can't believe that Rulers of the Sea receives only a 6.6-star average on the IMDb.

This is a really good film. The acting of the three leads is fine, the sets are wonderful, and the way the story deals with the technical (the conquest of the Atlantic by steamships), the personal (the hardships of the inventor and his daughter, and the love between the daughter and the young captain who helps her father), and the political (the machinations of the various shipbuilders, machine shop owners, and capitalists who have interests for or against the new technology) is quite skillful.

It's not a fast-paced film, and so for people who want lots of action, it may seem dull. But it's a thoughtful film about a serious economic and humanitarian issue, with great actors in the leads and dozens of veteran character actors in the smaller parts.

I have a watchable but not very good quality copy on DVD-r which I purchased from an ebay merchant who had obviously pulled it off a television broadcast. If any company would put this out on a proper DVD I would gladly buy one, because the films looks impressive visually even on the DVD-r and would look spectacular in a cleaned-up edition.

1939 was a great year for films, and everyone knows of the big 10 or 15 films of that year. What most people don't realize is that there were just as many films in that year that were almost as good, or as good, as the more celebrated ones. Two 1939 comedies which are almost completely overlooked, Bachelor Father and Midnight, can hold their own with any screwball comedy. And there are many good dramas that hardly anyone hears about: In Name Only with Cary Grant; Juarez with Bette Davis and Brian Aherne; The Four Feathers; Rulers of the Sea, and many more.

Rulers of the Sea is a very competently executed story of early steamship travel. Lloyd knew his business as a director.

It was good to see Margaret Lockwood (ML) again playing Will Fyffe's daughter as she did in "Owd Bob" (1938) when John Loder was her fiancé.This time the romance is between David Gillespie (Douglas Fairbanks Jnr)(DF) and Mary Shaw (ML) takes longer to develop as DF is very reticent to show his feelings to ML despite MLs obvious feelings for him.The reason is that DF has to make his way in the world and establish himself before he commits to a wife.Meanwhile ML is not too convinced her father should throw away his secure engineering job on Greenock on the Clyde for a speculative job designing steam engines for ships urged on by DF. Although a fictitious story, the scriptwriters do mention that "The Great Western Railway" is planning a rival designed to beat the Shaw and Gillespie steamship, "The Dog Star" in the race as first steamship to New York and cross the Atlantic non stop.

I presume this rival was the "The Great Western" which in the late 1830s was a paddle steamer which was designed before the much more famous "SS Great Britain" by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.The latter ship was launched at Bristol in 1843, as the first screw driven steamship to cross the North Atlantic.This ship was returned in 1970 to Bristol to the same shipyard whence it was originally launched after languishing in the Falkland Islands for many years.I have visited the site and toured this ship.

It is a pity ML abandoned the U.S. and returned to the UK after making just two films there, this and "Susannah of the Mounties" (1939) with Randolph Scott and Shirley Temple; as I felt (ML) and (DF) had a good on-screen chemistry together.Will Fyffe plays his usual crafty character role as an engineer of steamship engines who captures the imagination of a dispirited DF by his imaginative (but not mathematically correct) pioneer designer.

In 1819 a little steamboat named the Savannah crossed the Atlantic Ocean. It was something of an experiment, as no ship running on steam had ever crossed the Atlantic (this was only a dozen years after Robert Fulton made steamboat travel on American waterways possible). The Savannah ran out of wood before it reached America, and had to use sails to complete the voyage, but it is usually accredited as the first trans-Atlantic ocean liner. It's day was brief. The Savannah was wrecked in 1821.

Really successful ocean steamship travel did not begin until 1837-39. The Savannah was considered an example of waste and futility. But while sail travel was still advancing between Europe and North America (it would not be until the 1830s to 1850s that sail travel reached it's apogee with Donald McKay's wonderful clipper ships) the success of steam travel in American waterways could not be ignored. The British were the ones who decided to return to what the Savannah pointed to - in 1837 the steamship "Royal William" successfully crossed the Atlantic from Great Britain. But it went to Canada, not America. Still the future of steam travel on the Atlantic was inevitable.

This film is about the first attempt to cross the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York City in 1837. Will Fyffe is the engineer who designs the steam engine and boat, with the assistance of Douglas Fairbanks. Fairbanks had been first mate to a sailing ship captained by George Bancroft, who is naturally not to happy about losing a good mate and watching a future rival transportation method. Fairbanks is also romancing Margaret Lockwood, Fyffe's daughter. The film follows the trials and tribulations of the Fyffe and Fairbanks, until they get their chance. When they meet with a breakdown in the ocean, and a violent storm the crisis of the movie arrives. I like this film, so I won't spoil how the crisis is overcome.

One curious point. The boat that Fyffe and Fairbanks build is captained by "Lt. Roberts" (of the British navy). In history "Lt. Roberts" was the captain of the steamship "President" which was the largest in the world in 1840 - 41. In 1841, when headed for England, the "President" disappeared forever near Nantucket shoals off Massachusetts. It had over 100 people on board (a large number at the time) including Lt. Roberts. Lord Charles Lennox, son of the Duke of Lennox, was also lost, as was his close friend the actor Tyrone Power (the great grandfather of the movie star of the 1930s-1958).