How long did they keep whalers in service? Even if Joy was born on the maiden voyage, she would still have been in service for 70(?) years. She must to have been the Constitution of the whaling fleet. Who knows Paul Watson probably claims he sank her too.
shareI had the same question, and then I remembered...
According to Melville's tales of whaling in the 19th century, the typical whaling voyage took 4 to 5 years at sea with little if no port calls [surviving on initial provisions and whale leftovers...]. For a span of 70 years that is 14 to 18 whaling expeditions at an average of 2000 barrels of oil. In the movie, the Pride of Bedford did look older than the more streamlined Boston whaler of the last scene and comensurate to sailships of the 1812's. Properly maintained wood sailing ships do last longer than metal, especially later steamships which were more prone to rust, engine vibration and fires. The detail in the movie was impressive, even more than those of the many Moby Dick movie versions. For more information on whaling ships try to read through Moby Dick!!! Melville goes into extreme detail.
The whole point of Moby Dick was that after all, whalers seldom made land - thus, the voyage is one of personal quest and learning about whaling, and not discovery,hence a very thick, detailed novel!
This movie really feels like a condensed version of the latter. Ishmael being just a young chap named Jed [even down to the cringing bed sharing narrative]- which is after all schoolmaster Bush's justification for Jed's social promotion: he will learn more at sea than what any book can teach - learning comes from within, from the desire to learn.
So to have Capt. Joy born and died on the same ship is an apt poetic metaphore for the generational lineage of the family and the fact that the captain had metamorphed into the living embodiment of the ship in the end. The last scene with the sleeker Boston ship drove that point through.
Below, I am pasting in a link to an original press still showing Richard Widmark and Dean Stockwell in the burial at sea scene that was cut from the final release version of Henry Hathaway’s splendid “Down to the Sea in Ships”. The scene shows the burial of the characters played by Lionel Barrymore and Harry Morgan. It's never been in any print of the film that I've seen. It was obviously filmed, but cut from the finished film before release, probably to keep the editing tight between the death of Captain Joy and the scene were Jed and Dan sight the Boston ship in the last scene. This particular scene was also featured on one of the American lobby cards for the film.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35455749@N06/8206826262/
To enlarge the image and read the description underneath it, simply left click on the image.
I have a large number of press stills from the film on my flickr photostream, but they are not all bunched together, so you will have to search through all the pages to find them.