Richard Greene is a Broadway playboy who's father has gotten him into a plush spot in the Navy during the First World War .... so he thinks. He seems to be the engineer on a sub chaser on permanent drydock in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, with a crew of raw recruits and no captain. This gives him a chance to fall in love with Nancy Kelly, the daughter and second-in-command of a freighter run by George Bancroft, who thinks little of the Navy, and less of Broadway playboys. But this comfortable slot is upset when the skipper comes aboard. It's Preston Foster, and he has a lot to prove. He ran his last command onto the rocks, dropped thirty places, and has been assigned to the Splinter Fleet.
That's how the Navy referred to its last wooden ships. They were designed to be built fast and cheap, twice the beam of a PT boat, and despised as an assignment. They were thought gone with the end of the First World War, but following Pearl Harbor, and the sinking of the Pacific Fleet the Navy looked at the "fast" part of building them, and loaded up on them from little shipbuilding firms up and down both coasts.
I was confused at first by this John Ford movie, mostly because, like many 1930s films about the First World War, civilians dressed pretty much as they did in the 1930s. So when Ford turned into a stickler for Naval uniform, and gave Foster a sword, I was confused, stopped the movie, and realized my mistake. There's the usual tropes, with Greene shaping up like Kipling's raw recruit, Slim Summerville as the ship's cook who serves nothing but lamb stew, and lots of the Ford Stock Company of the era to provide humor. Elisha Cook, Jr. Is also present, looking about 15 years old at an actual 35. It's certainly not a classic in any sense of the word, but a strong programmer to clear the decks for his next feature, STAGECOACH.
