''Ghostboat'' is a 2006 British

television film A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a film with a running time similar to a feature film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a Terrestr ...

, based on a novel by George E. Simpson and Neal R. Burger. The film features David Jason as its star. It is a fantasy tale of His Majesty's Submarine ''Scorpion'' vanishing during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, leaving only one crew member (David Jason) surviving. 38 years later, in the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

year 1981, the ''Scorpion'' reappears; the crew have disappeared, but the vessel is otherwise unchanged and has not aged in the intervening years. A

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

crew along with the sole survivor of the original voyage is given the mission of retracing the last days of the boat prior to her 1943 disappearance. A supernatural influence takes hold of most of the crew, and they start showing characteristics of the old crew. They find themselves fighting Second World War ghosts.

Plot

HMS ''Scorpion'', a British submarine that had gone missing in the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

during the Second World War, surfaces in the path of a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

freighter in 1981. The vessel is returned to British custody. Naval Intelligence is interested in the case because it seems that, for the first time, a ship has returned from ''"the Devil's Triangle of the North"''. The submarine opens her own hatch to let the investigating team in, where they find the vessel in a state of perfect preservation, but find no sign of the crew. Jack Hardy is the only surviving member of the original crew, having been found floating and rescued in 1943 by members of Nazi Germany's

Kriegsmarine The (, ) was the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The was one of three official military branch, branche ...

; but he has no memory of the last days of the 1943 mission. He and Alan Cassidy, one of the vessel's designers, join a

crew on a mission to retrace ''Scorpions last days before she went missing.

Commander Commander (commonly abbreviated as Cmdr.) is a common naval officer rank as well as a job title in many army, armies. Commander is also used as a rank or title in other formal organizations, including several police forces. In several countri ...

Travis, a naval intelligence officer, is in charge of the mission while Captain Byrnes captains the submarine. The mission will take the submarine into Soviet waters while a surface ship, HMS ''Oakland,'' escorts the boat. Once in the Baltic, the current crew begins to take on the personalities and identities of the dead crew, and the boat takes a degree of control over herself. Contact with ''Oakland'' is soon lost. A "Soviet submarine" is detected and through communication error the crew fires upon her and destroys her. ''Scorpion'' surfaces to search for survivors, but, impossibly, no debris is found. Hardy realises that the "Soviet submarine" was destroyed at the exact same place and time where the ''Scorpion'' sank a German

U-boat U-boats are Submarine#Military, naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the World War I, First and Second World Wars. The term is an Anglicization#Loanwords, anglicized form of the German word , a shortening of (), though the G ...

in 1943, and speculates that "the past is breaking through". Cassidy, who had supervised the fitting of the ''Scorpion'' with practice torpedoes, finds that they have become live weapons. Captain Byrnes tries to abort the mission, but Cdr Travis convinces him to continue. Hardy learns that the real mission is to discover and exploit the power that preserved and delivered the ''Scorpion''. Soon, three aircraft are detected on radar whilst the ''Scorpion'' is surfaced. The aircraft are Second World War

Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...

fighters; Captain Byrnes says in stunned disbelief "This can't be real". Travis pulls out a gun and orders Byrnes below. The fighters then strafe the boat with gunfire. The captain is killed, and Travis takes command. Cassidy and Hardy find no bullet damage on the deck or tower from the strafing attack, and conclude that Travis may have shot the captain to preserve the mission. Travis apparently becomes possessed by the former captain himself. The original submarine captain's intent had been to torpedo ships of the German fleet in the then German city of

Königsberg Königsberg (; ; ; ; ; ; , ) is the historic Germany, German and Prussian name of the city now called Kaliningrad, Russia. The city was founded in 1255 on the site of the small Old Prussians, Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teuton ...

, which is now the Soviet city of Kaliningrad. Modern Soviet officers detect the incoming hostile vessel, and begin preparations for a

nuclear war Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a War, military conflict or prepared Policy, political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are Weapon of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conven ...

. Hardy manages to get the crew off the boat before she can attack the Soviet fleet, but Travis and the submarine, essentially as one entity, continue the attack. Hardy rewires the torpedo control system, causing the torpedoes to explode in the torpedo tubes. The explosion kills Travis, and causes the vessel to sink. Hardy is shot in the process. Hardy dies on his bunk, clutching a picture of his wife as the water engulfs him. Six months later, the Soviets find the sunken ''Scorpion''; and she looks like she has been decaying for forty years. Neither Hardy's nor Travis' bodies are found. The Soviets close their investigation of the incident. British intelligence intercepts the Soviet report, leading British military authorities to also close their files on the case. The British Admiral says "There was no Kaliningrad incident; it never happened. The ''Scorpion'' sank in 1943".

Cast

* David Jason as Jack Hardy * Ian Puleston-Davies as Travis * Tony Haygarth as Alan Cassidy * Julian Wadham as Captain Nathan Byrnes * James Laurenson as Admiral Nealy * Robert Whitelock as Spender * Crispin Bonham-Carter as Redding * Jamie Martin as Tyler * Roger Evans as Monroe * Jonathan Cullen as Captain Basquine * Alan Stocks as Peterson * Lee Whitlock as Reeves * Mark Callum as Callum * Max Bollinger as Soviet Naval Captain * David Nellist as 1943 Crewman * Robert Horwell as Mason

Production

The film was announced in August 2005. David Jason was enthralled by the book ''Ghostboat'' and adapting it was a long-held wish of his. The drama aired as two separate 90-minute episodes. It was one of the most expensive dramas ever made by ITV. The submarine used in filming is the non-diving replica, built in

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

as the 'modified' S-''33'' for the film '' U-571'', also shot in Malta. The replica is still afloat, moored in Marsa in the inner part of the Grand Harbour.

Film versus novel

The 1972 book ''Ghostboat'' was set in 1974, and revolved around the re-appearance of the Pacific Fleet class Submarine 284 USS ''Candlefish'', thirty years after she disappeared in the Devil's Sea in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

off the Kuriles, toward

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. The ''Candlefish'' surfaces in the path of a Japanese freighter northwest of

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reci ...

. The characters and their names remain basically the same (e.g. Alan Cassidy is Walter Cassidy, Travis is Frank Crook) and the mission to re-trace the last days of the ''Candlefish'' has no undercurrent of intrigue. In the original story ''Candlefish'' fell through a Geo-magnetic Anomaly (GMA), one of ten, five in the

Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined by humans as being in the same celestial sphere, celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the Solar ...

, five in the Southern; and surfaced in the middle of another. The plot is concerned not so much with ''how'' the submarine came back, but ''why'' she came back. The final mission of the ''Candlefish'' was changed by her captain, to an unplanned entry to

Tokyo Bay is a bay located in the southern Kantō region of Japan spanning the coasts of Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Chiba Prefecture, on the southern coast of the island of Honshu. Tokyo Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Uraga Channel. Th ...

, in an attempt to sink anything Japanese, and thus acquire a higher figure for tonnage sunk. This falls rapidly apart as the ''Candlefish'' sinks, with one survivor – Jack Hardy – injured and washed overboard from the conning tower. As the story concludes, ''Candlefish'' risks being unleashed on an unsuspecting Japan in 1974.

Reception

The film received a score of 6.5/10 on Internet Movie Database.

Award nominations

''Ghostboat'' was nominated for the 2006 RTS Television Award for Best Sound - Drama.

DVD release

''Ghostboat'' was released on DVD on 15 January 2007, nine months after its first showing on ITV on 9 April 2006.

Notes and references

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ghostboat (Film) 2006 television films 2006 drama films 2006 films 2000s mystery drama films 2000s mystery thriller films 2006 British television series debuts 2006 British television series endings 2000s British drama television series 2000s ghost films World War II television drama series ITV television dramas 2000s British television miniseries Films about spirit possession Films set in 1943 Films set in 1981 Films set in the Baltic Sea Films set in the Soviet Union Television shows based on British novels Television series by ITV Studios Television series by Yorkshire Television British English-language television shows Television shows set in England Television shows set in Italy World War II submarine films Cold War submarine films Films based on British novels Royal Navy in World War II films