Lily (ship)

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History
United States
NameLily
BuilderDickie Brothers in San Francisco
Completed1882
Refit1934
General characteristics
TypeSchooner - frigate - schooner
Length31.25 m (102 ft 6 in)
Beam8.78 m (28 ft 10 in)
Draft2.68 m (8 ft 10 in)

Lily was a two-masted schooner (1882) which in 1934 was modified for use as the 18th century full-rigged ship HMS Bounty in the 1935 film Mutiny on the Bounty with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton.

Origin[edit]

Lily was designed by the shipyard Dickie Brothers in San Francisco and built in 1882 for the shipping company J. C. Hawley. She had a sister ship named Ivy.[1]

United States west coast newspapers reported about the career of Lily. Right after the vessel's launch, it was noticed that her rigging was too large. So, eleven feet (3.4 m) were taken off her main mast, and the foremast was shortened accordingly.[2] In 1895, she was converted from a sealer to a society racer.[3] In January 1909, coming from Umpqua River, Oregon, she had to weather a storm outside San Francisco.[4]

Lily had more than one movie "career". The first ended 1921, when another sale was announced.[5] After a short stint in Mexico, a man named Captain All acquired the schooner for business in Nicaragua.[6] It appears that this business, including liquor transport, was not all legal; Captain All lost the vessel to the state of Canada.[7]

Film business[edit]

In the late 1920s, Lily was active in the film business again. Amongst others, she appeared in the movies The Single Standard,[8] a silent film with Greta Garbo, and in The Ship from Shanghai,[9] still in schooner rig.[7]

Lily was eventually acquired by the film production company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who had her rebuilt by the Wilmington Boat Works in Wilmington, California in 1934[10] to resemble the three-masted full-rigged ship Bounty[11][12] in Mutiny on the Bounty.[13] For film shoots at the original locations, Lily / Bounty sailed to Tahiti and back, together with the second ship of the production, Nanuk, which represented the historic frigate HMS Pandora.[14]

Only in 1946, there is a report stating that her "film career" came to an end:[15]

In the last three months, anchored off Cabrillo beach, the schooner Lily, for that is her true name, has had some of the Hollywood gingerbread removed and her original schooner rig restored.

— Maritime News, San Pedro News Pilot July 25, 1946

Several photos and sketches of Lily can be found in JaySea's blog The First Bounty Replica.[14]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Eighteenth Annual List of Merchant Vessels of the United States, Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1886, p. S. 46
  2. ^ "Local Matters". Humboldt Times. Vol. XVIII, no. 89. Eureka, California. October 14, 1882. p. 3. Retrieved May 18, 2023. The schooners Ivy and Lily, recently built in San Francisco by the Dickie Bros, for Falk & Hawley, were found to be improperly rigged, und will be altered.
  3. ^ "Fate of a famous craft". San Francisco Call. Vol. 77, no. 118. April 7, 1895. p. 7. Retrieved May 18, 2023.
  4. ^ "Schooner Lily, Which Disappeared on Stormy Night, Shows Up Again". San Francisco Call. Vol. 105, no. 60. January 29, 1909. p. 13. Retrieved May 18, 2023.
  5. ^ "Schooner Lily's Career as a Film Actor is Ended". San Pedro News Pilot. Vol. 9, no. 68. Los Angeles. December 21, 1921. p. 4. Retrieved May 18, 2023.
  6. ^ "Capt. All Buys Schooner Lily". San Pedro News Pilot. Los Angeles. March 19, 1923. p. 8. Retrieved May 18, 2023. The schooner Lily. which has been used in motion picture work and later as a fish carier on the Mexican coast, has been sold to Captain Carl All [...] for operation in Central America.
  7. ^ a b Keavy, Hubbard (September 29, 1930). "Movie Ships Cash In on Years at Sea and Earn More Per Day Than Most Actors in Hollywood". San Bernardino Sun. Vol. 67, no. 29. p. 4. Retrieved May 18, 2023. The Lily, a two-masted schooner, [...] was a liquor carrier for five years under Nicaraguan register, then was captured and confiscated in 1921 by the Canadian government.
  8. ^ The Single Standard (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1929)
  9. ^ The Ship from Shanghai (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1930)
  10. ^ "Bounty Again to Ride Seas – Wilmington Boat Works is Builder of Replica of Historic Craft". San Pedro News Pilot. Vol. 7, no. 139. San Pedro, Los Angeles. August 14, 1934. Retrieved May 17, 2023. the "Bounty" hides beneath its new exterior the hull of the venerable Pacific coast windjammer "Lily."
  11. ^ "Old Sailing Vessels "Made Up" as Famous Ships for the Movies". Popular Science Monthly. January 1936. pp. 20–21.
  12. ^ "The Lily, H.M.S Bounty.". Archived from the original on February 22, 2012.
  13. ^ Mutiny on the Bounty (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1935)
  14. ^ a b JaySea (January 29, 2023). "The First Bounty Replica". Retrieved May 22, 2023. the Pandora had started its life as a wooden three-masted schooner that served in the California lumber trade named the Ottilie Fjord.
  15. ^ "Maritime Notes". San Pedro News Pilot. Vol. 19, no. 126. Los Angeles. July 25, 1946. p. 9. Retrieved May 18, 2023.

Further reading[edit]

  • Jackson, Melvin H. & The Smithsonian Institution, ed. (1938), American merchant marine survey, vol. VI, ISBN 0881430064
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