FAQ

When a fire breaks out in the boiler room of the SS Claridon, a 38-year old luxury liner on its way from California to Japan and just five trips from the scrapyard, the crew quickly puts out the fire. However, the heat has fused shut several safety valves, resulting in a huge explosion that rips through the engine room and the many decks above it, trapping one of the passengers, Laurie Henderson (Dorothy Malone), under a steel beam in her stateroom. As the rest of the passengers are being loaded into the lifeboats to abandon ship, Laurie's husband Cliff (Robert Stack) searches frantically for an acetylene torch in order to free his wife from under the beam before the doomed ship sinks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The Last Voyage is based on a screenplay by American film-maker Andrew Stone, who also produced and directed the movie. It's said to be based on the sinking of the Italian SS Andrea Doria, in which a passenger was trapped in her cabin when the ship was rammed in the side by the Swedish MS Stockholm off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1956, just a few years before this movie was filmed.

Yes. An aging ship, the French luxury liner SS Ile de France, had been sold to a Japanese scrapyard and was rented (for $1.5 million) for the filming of the movie. The ship was towed to a shallow spot in the Sea of Japan, where parts of the movie were filmed. The ship's interior was exploded as seen in the movie, and the ship itself was flooded so that it would sink lower in the water. However, the ship never sank completely, because it was already resting on the sea bottom. Ironically, the Ile de France was among the ships who came to the aid of the Andrea Doria and picked up hundreds of its survivors.

Hank Lawson (Woody Strode) and Second engineer Walsh (Edmond O'Brien) carry the acetylene tank to the cabin room where Cliff is sitting with Laurie, who still lies pinned under the steel girder. Water has begun to seep into the cabin, so Cliff holds Laurie's head out of the water while Walsh torches the girder until Cliff is able to pull Laurie out from under it. As water begins to flood the corridors, the four of them (Cliff carrying Laurie) race topside. They are joined by Third Officer Osborne, and the five of them jump into the water just as the ship starts to go down. They swim for the nearest lifeboat, and are helped aboard. In the final scene, Cliff personally helps Lawson climb into the lifeboat. In a voice-over, the narrator says, 'This was the death of the steamship Claridon. This was her last voyage.'

The basic premise -- that of a woman trapped in the cabin of a sinking ship while her husband races to find a tool to release her -- is intact, however the circumstances have been altered, which is what makes the movie 'based on' rather than 'the story of'' the Andrea Doria. For example, the name of the ship in the movie is the SS Claridon. The Claridon sinks because of an explosion in the boiler room, whereas the Andrea Doria was rammed by another ship. The Claridon sinks in one hour; the Andrea Doria stayed afloat for 11 hours. The 'tool' in this movie is an acetylene torch; it was a jack in the Andrea Doria. The Claridon goes down 'in the middle of the ocean' on its way to Japan; the Andrea Doria sank off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts.