Morning Departure (1950)
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From the British comes the incredible Morning Departure, a movie that very nearly didn’t get released. The movie deals with the accidental sinking of the fictional submarine, the HMS Trojan. Prior to its scheduled release, a similar situation actually occurred, as the submarine HMS Truculent sank in the river Thames, killing 64 people. The titles of this picture actually declare it as a tribute to those men, and to the ship itself.
In Morning Departure, we get a glimpse into the business of peace-time, a fact that isn’t lost on many of the crew and officer corps. Little of that matters, though, as the routine business of training missions soon takes a turn for the worse, as the Trojan finds herself up against a wayward leftover mine.
She winds up at the bottom of the ocean, with only twelve men surviving the initial explosion. From there the tension only increases, both with the men trapped below, and up top, as the salvage crew races against the elements to get them up.
After eight men are rescued, four remain, and their hopes rest with the salvage crew. As luck would have it, bad luck, weather conditions force the ship to be left to its fate, and those four men.
I guess you could say that its full of the same old submarine movie cliches. The claustrophobic weakling who overcomes in the end, the cool-headed and understanding captain, the typical sea-faring pirate type (Blimey!)… but that’s actually the strength of the film. That these four men can come together, *without* killing each other (as you would likely have today) as friends in acceptance of their final fate…. It’s a fitting tribute.
Morning Departure is ultimately just that, a fitting tribute to the men who served in those submarines, and faced conditions and situations like this. It’s also an excellent look at the camaraderie that can and does exist between shipmates, even between officers and enlisted men.
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