CinemaSerf

It seems like hardly any time at all since Franchot Tone was sailing aboard HMS “Bounty” but here he is, again, aboard a ship, again flirting with mutiny, on a trading mission to Oregon. It’s captained by the fastidious but not inhumane “Thorne” (Walter Brennan) and crewed by a usual mix of seafaring types and by cocky Frenchman “de Montigny” (John Carroll). They have barely left the port when “Stevens” (Tone) discovers a stowaway in his cabin. “Julie” (Carol Bruce) has been snuck aboard by her French beau on the pretext that they are going to France. Before he gets a chance to get to the bottom of things, the captain walks in for some charts and, angry at being deceived, insists that she adopt the role of his cabin boy. The rest of the voyage sees her cause just about everyone to spar and spat before they arrive and the ship’s two Scottish traders (Nigel Bruce and Leo G. Carroll) attempt to seduce the locals with trinkets and live piglets. Once their trading colony is set up, what adventurous elements to the plot there were largely disappear. It really just becomes a pretty flat love-triangle style of soap that Brennan looks uncomfortable with, Nigel and Leo G. look vaguely perplexed by, whilst Tone and the other Carroll just coast along woodenly as they woo the final Carol in this story, who is meantime doing her best “Esmeralda” impersonation. The dialogue is not much to write home about but the seagoing score sometimes livens things up as they ease their halyards and tighten their mizen tops and it passes the time easily enough before an ending I could quite imagine Brennan had fancied doing half an hour earlier.