Making films can be a dangerous business.
Since the 1910s there’s been a death every decade on a Hollywood film set.
The first occurred in 1914 when actress Grace McHugh and camera operator Owen Carter, drowned in the Arkansas River while filming Across the Border.
Then there was the accident that took Brandon Lee’s life on the set of The Crow. On March 31, 1993, Lee, who was the son of martial artist Bruce Lee, was shot by his co-star, with a prop gun loaded with blanks, the gunpowder in the blank cartridge ignited, and a bullet fragment pierced Lee, who later died in surgery.
Nearly three decades later, cinematographer Haylna Hutchins was fatally shot in a similar incident when a live round was discharged from a prop gun fired by Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust.
But the deadliest day in Hollywood history? Happened on March 15, 1931, when an explosion killed all but one member of a film crew.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I’m sharing the tragic story of the SS Viking Disaster!
When Fridtjof Nansen stepped foot on the SS Viking on March 11, 1882, the ship was only a few weeks out of dry dock.
The Arctic researcher would be a passenger on the ship as it embarked on its first journey.
For the next five months, Nansen studied Arctic zoology first-hand and proved that sea ice formed on the surface of the water, rather than below which showed the Gulf Stream flowing beneath a cold layer of surface water.
All this scientific work was done while the ship hunted for seals off the coast of Newfoundland.
In early July, the Viking became trapped in ice, but broke free on July 17 and returned to port in August, the researcher left the ship and our story behind, but the life of the SS Viking was just beginning.
So how did this ship become involved in one of the worst Hollywood accidents? For that we head to 1902, when the Bowring Brothers company, based out of St. John’s, Newfoundland, purchased the ship.
Two years later, William Bartlett became the new captain and for the next 22 years he would be at the helm as his crew hunted seals for their pelts.
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
On March 26, 1910, the Viking had its first bit of bad luck when it ran ashore at St. Pierre Island, off the coast of Newfoundland.
It was a minor incident, and the ship was able to get back into the water with assistance from another ship.
Two days later, it reached port with 24,000 seal pelts.
In 1926, William Bartlett retired after taking part in 23 voyages where he hauled 234,997 seals pelts.
G. Whitney took over as captain in 1927, and after completing one voyage was replaced by I. Barbour, who completed two voyages from 1928 to 1929. Then Babcock took over in 1930 right before Robert Bartlett became captain. And he…would take his role to the silver screen.
Robert Bartlett was born to be on the ocean.
He was the eldest child of the SS Viking’s original skipper so being a captain was literally in his blood.
He grew up in the beautiful seaside town of Brigus, Newfoundland in a lovely cottage with wraparound veranda surrounded by gardens.
By the age of 17, he mastered his first ship and began a lifelong love affair with the Arctic.
When Robert was 33, he captained the SS Roosevelt, and sailed with explorer Robert Peary on in his quest to reach the North Pole.
They broke trail through 200 kilometres of the frozen Arctic Sea, and for their efforts the National Geographic Society awarded Robert Bartlett the Hubbard Medal.
In 1913, Robert served as a captain on the Karluk under Vilhjalmur Stefansson on the Canadian Arctic Expedition to explore the regions of the Parry Archipelago and got marooned in ice in September of that year.
Stefansson left the ship on the pretext of finding fresh meat for the crew and never returned. Instead, he spent his time searching for new islands to catalogue with a small party that followed him off the ship.
Meanwhile, Robert Bartlett spent months stranded on the ship as it drifted west in ice.
Bartlett and the other 24 men on board assumed Stefannson and his party were dead, so Bartlett and Kataktovik, an Inuit hunter, walked 1,100 kilometres southeast to reach Alaska where they launched a rescue of the surviving crew.
They had left them on the ship near Wrangel Island, off the coast of Russia and despite Bartlett’s best efforts, only 12 survived.
Four years later Bartlett was at the helm of another ship.
In 1917 he captained Neptune, and rescued members of the Crocker Land Expedition, who had been stranded in the Arctic for four years.
He became popular among the press, the public, and those he had rescued, and that fame was about to skyrocket.
In 1925 became the captain of his own schooner the Effie M. Morrissey and launched several important scientific expeditions to the Arctic sponsored by American museums, the Royal Geographic Society and the Explorers Club.
In 1930, he took over command of the Viking for one season because Varick Frissell, was looking to make a film about the annual Newfoundland seal hunt and he needed the legendary captain.
Born to a wealthy family, Varick Frissell developed a keen interest in film from an early age.
He grew up with the confidence and athleticism nurtured by his privileged background and after being privately educated he entered Yale University in the fall of 1922.
Handsome and well over six feet tall, he excelled in rowing and water polo, and became a member of the Whiffenpoofs, an a cappella group. While at school he attended a lecture held by Dr. Wilfrid Grenfell about Labrador, which inspired him to visit and explore the northern wilderness.
He was attracted by the adventure and inspired by the landscape.
From September 1921 until April 1922, he worked in Labrador as a volunteer for the International Grenfell Association.
While at university he was secretary, treasurer, and president of the Yale Grenfell Association and in the summers, he returned to Newfoundland and Labrador.
In 1925, he explored the Churchill River which flows east from the Smallwood Reservoir into the Atlantic Ocean. It is the longest river in Atlantic Canada and Frissell was the first person to capture the mighty Churchill Falls on film.
The footage was released as a short documentary entitled The lure of the Labrador, which saw a modest success.
He graduated with a Bachelor of Philosophy the following year and in 1927 he wrote an account of his explorations and submitted it to The Geographical Journal for publication.
Titled Explorations in the Grand Falls Region of Labrador earned him membership in the Royal Geographical Society.
He then spent six weeks (February to April) working aboard a sealing steamer and shooting film when he was not on duty.
He was fascinated by the adventure of the hunt but felt that it was “no fun killing seals.”
About 40 minutes long and using about 10,000 feet of film it would become The Great Arctic Seal Hunt released in 1928.
He then worked as a cameraman for Robert Joseph Flaherty, famous for 1922’s Nanook of the north. From 1928–29 he shot in the southwestern United States and combined documentary footage with a dramatic plot. But the film was never released, and the uncompleted footage was later lost.
He intended to make a feature-length film on the seal hunt, and with the success he had seen from his previous movie he formed the Newfoundland-Labrador Film Company and a year later embarked on his most audacious project.
After securing a distribution deal with Paramount Pictures for $100,000 he was supposed to begin shooting in February.
Titled Vikings of the Ice Field, the film involved going to Newfoundland and shooting on location on ice floes, using state-of-the-art magnetic wire recording technology to record sound. It was supposed to be the first film to record sound and dialogue on location.
But first Paramount insisted that Frissell hire an experienced director and writer and he turned to George Melford.
George Melford began his career as a stage actor in Cincinnati and joined the Kalem Company Motion Picture studio in 1909 hoping to break into film.
At first, he was hired to portray various characters but, in the autumn of 1910, he was sent to the West Coast by the studio to work with a film crew where he discovered he preferred to be behind the camera.
In 1911, he co-directed his first short film, Arizona Bill, based on a script he wrote and for the next four years, he directed 30 films for Kalem Studios.
His most famous film was released in 1921.
The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, set attendance records and grossed $1.5 million at the box office.
Ten years later George Melford was in Newfoundland and Labrador about to helm Frissell’s first full length feature film.
Written by Garnett Weston and set on the coast of Newfoundland, it was a story of a rivalry that develops between Jed Nelson, a seal hunter, and Luke Oarum, a local man considered a jinx.
The seal hunter goads Luke into accompanying him on an Arctic sealing expedition on Viking, because he was worried that Luke would steal his girlfriend, Mary Joe. The ship would be commanded by Capt. Barker and after the two men end up in a hunting party on ice floes, they eventually find themselves stranded.
This is when Jed tries to kill Luke, but the snow blinds him and his gunshot misses.
Not exactly Citizen Kane.
Louise Huntington would play Mary Joe.
Her first film, Not Exactly Gentlemen, was completed just before she began work on Frissell’s picture.
Captain Robert Bartlett, who had commanded the SS Viking for a year and was the son of its original skipper, would play the captain of the ship.
You could say it was the role he was born to play.
Charles Starrett starred as Luke Oarum, the lead role. He began acting in 1926 and his career as a romantic lead grew over the next few years.
Principal photography began in February 1930 around St. John’s various neighbourhoods.
While Melford directed, Frissell took a small crew to the Grand Banks on the SS Ungava, which was Captain Robert Bartlett ship, to Labrador, to film action sequences on the ice.
The conditions were arduous aboard the vessel and on the ice.
Once the film was completed, it was screened by a private audience at the Nickel Theatre in St. John’s on March 5, 1931.
The response was positive, the film’s strength was the real-life scenes contributed by Frissell rather than the awkward love story and Paramount declined to release the film.
Hoping to salvage the film and regain Paramount’s support, Frissell went back out onto the ice fields to get new footage of big waves, tall icebergs and hopefully a storm or two from the deck of a ship.
To shoot additional material, he hired the SS Viking to take himself, his dog Cabot and the film crew out into the water.
On March 9, 1931, the ship left the harbour under the command of Abram Kean.
While Robert Bartlett excelled at keeping people alive in the harshest Arctic Ocean conditions, Kean was known for being part of one of the most tragic sealing disasters in Newfoundland history.
Born in 1855 in Newfoundland, Abram Kean began to work as a cod fisher at 18 and soon moved into seal hunting.
In 1872, he participated in his first sealing season, setting off in a crew of 70 men.
After ten years, he became a captain and commanded the Hannie & Bennie, a sealing ship during the 1883 and 1884 seasons.
If there was one thing Kean was good at, it was killing seals.
Over the course of his career, it is estimated he hunted one million seals averaging 155 seal pelts per day from 1889 to 1895.
On March 31, 1914, Kean captained the SS Stephano as he departed for the sealing season.
The SS Newfoundland was captained by his son Westbury.
At 7 a.m. Kean signaled to his son l that he had spotted seals.
Westbury’s crew walked 11 kilometres over the ice floe to meet up with Stephano when they reached it, they had dinner.
After their meal, Kean ordered them onto the ice to hunt for seals even though the weather was worsening.
Kean believed they would complete their task quickly and be able to return to the SS Newfoundland.
Westbury assumed that his crew would be staying on his father’s ship.
There was no communication because Kean removed the radio from his ship to save money on the licence.
Meanwhile, the men wandered on the ice struggling to find their way back to either ship in a raging blizzard.
After three days they knew something was wrong, neither ship had heard from the crew.
Of the 132 men who went out onto the ice to hunt seals, 78 died from drowning or exposure.
A Commission of Enquiry ruled that the deaths were an Act of God, or inevitable.
Kean escaped punishment but became a hated man among the sealing community and 3,000 people submitted a petition for his arrest but nothing came of it.
Kean paid it no heed and went back the following season and continued to be captain on sealing vessels.
That is who was at the helm of the SS Viking when it left St. John’s on March 9, 1931, to shoot additional footage.
Aboard were a group of sealers, the film crew, Cabot the dog, Frissell and two stowaways.
The two stowaways were young men hoping for work, but Captain Kean found them and confined the men to the forecastle of the ship to be turned over to police when they docked at a port.
For the next few days, it was business as usual for the sealers and the film crew captured all the action.
Frissell’s wish for storm footage was granted as the ship dealt with high winds for several days.
Clayton King, the wireless operator, wrote in his diary,
“Heavy seas were boarding her, sweeping the length of the decks. The hands were busy at the pumps. The engineers down below were watching their gauges with anxious eyes. Slipping on the oily deck plates, they nursed the powerful engines like a mother caring for an only child.”
The weather calmed on March 13 and the ship sailed into Bonavista Bay for repairs and to offload the two stowaways.
The next day, they sailed out in search of seals.
King wrote that the crew were in high spirits.
That night, Frissell took a white tablecloth from the galley and turned it into a movie screen to show some of the footage.
Over the next two days, heavy ice began to spread down from White Bay and on March 15 after the sealing day was done Kean ordered the ship butted up into the ice jam to prevent it from moving in the night.
Clayton King wrote,
“At 7 p.m. when off White Bay, heavy ice was encountered, and the captain decided to stand into the ice and bed down for the night.”
With the ship resting against the ice, Kean went to his cabin to sleep. On the way, he saw Frissell and said,
“Well, Varick, here we are and here we are to stay. That is until tomorrow. Perhaps we will have a bit more luck then. We are rolling a bit with this swell running under the ice, but it will do no harm to this good old hull.”
Meanwhile the wireless operator went to the mess to get something to eat and found several members of the ship and film crew drinking in the saloon at the front of the ship.
As King walked to the mess, he saw Frissell writing on a piece of cardboard with his dog Cabot at his feet and asked what he was doing,
Frissell told him he was putting up warning notices.
King read DANGER in big block letters.
Frissell then said,
“If we are not careful, the boys coming down the companion way carrying lighted cigarettes might cause an explosion. You know, we have plenty of explosives aboard.”
Frissell was referring to the gunpowder and dynamite stored on the ship.
This was not unusual because they were routinely used to break up ice around a ship to prevent it from being encased in ice, which is what happened to the Franklin Expedition, as you might remember from my episode from 2023.
On the SS Viking Frissell worried that Kean’s command of the ship had a very lax policy when it came to safety.
He had warned people about the explosives on board before, and at one point he saw a man smoking a cigarette while sitting on a gunpowder keg.
Frissell asked King about some old flares that were stored in the captain’s stateroom and said.
“Better bring them out immediately. They’re a serious menace if kept there.”
King asked a man named Carter to retrieve the flares and set them on a nearby table.
Upon his return, Carter asked for a cigarette which he received one but did not light.
Frisell then said,
“Those flares are damaged and are not safe to keep aboard. Better take them out and throw them over the side.”
Carter picked up the flares and left towards the starboard stern side of the ship which was in the direction of the storeroom housing dynamite and gunpowder.
What happened next is unknown.
But if you’re keeping track there was:
A cigarette.
Faulty flares.
And a lot of dynamite.
At 9 p.m., as the ship sat in the icy water, and without warning it suddenly pitched.
King wrote,
“A few seconds after Carter’s departure, the ship gave a terrific lurch and listed over to an angle of about 40 degrees. All was in an instant chaos. All hands were thrown clear of the mess table. The stove capsized.”
And the worst was not over.
The ship righted itself immediately and Captain Kean came running out of his room and towards the deck.
Everyone in the mess got to their feet and began to clean up the dishes and food that had been thrown onto the floor.
But just as it had happened a few minutes earlier without warning, a massive explosion tore through the ship blowing the stern off the vessel and killing everyone sitting in the saloon.
King was knocked unconscious, but wrote later,
“Almost immediately there followed a terrific blast from the aft end of the saloon. For me, there followed…oblivion.”
Deck planking came tumbling down as flames tore through the hull of the ship.
Men were thrown through while others cried for help, trapped in the burning ship.
One of the firemen on board, Pat Breen, was blown across the ship.
He suffered a deep gash in his leg and heard men crying out for help from below near the boilers and engines.
He could not get to them as all routes to the engine room were blocked by heavy timbers and white-hot flames.
Captain Kean woke up on the ice, 12 feet away from the ship and injured from the blast that sent him flying through the air.
When King came to, he was surrounded by debris and had to push timber off his legs to escape the growing fire.
He could hear rushing water and realized it was the sound of his blood running down the side of his head.
Both his hair and clothes were on fire and as he patted his head to put out the fire, his hair came out in clumps.
King was able to put out the flames and pulled himself along the floor to find help.
Meanwhile, small explosions tore through what was left of the ship as chaos and fire reigned.
King reached the edge of the ship and threw himself over the side.
Injured, he fell into the North Atlantic and struggled in the frigid water.
A man named William Kennedy was nearby and called to him for help, but King was useless as his legs were shattered.
That’s when another explosion tore through the ship and sent a man into the air and onto a piece of ice.
He saw the man’s head was split open and watched in horror as the body convulsed and then slipped into the ocean.
King struggled to stay afloat when suddenly he was pulled out by Harry Sargent, a fellow crew member.
Sargent had also grabbed Kennedy who had fallen into the water and pulled him onto the ice.
As the ship sank into the cold water, they could see more explosions. Sargent, Kennedy and King got onto a piece of the ship’s stern which had been blown.
It would be a safer refuge than a piece of ice.
King, Sargent and Kennedy watched the wreckage as they drifted away from a larger group of survivors on another piece of ice.
King wrote,
“It was a cold winter’s night, and regardless of all the fire we had already gone through, it was now necessary to build a small one in order to live. Running from one fire to save our lives and now having to build one for the same reason.”
As they drifted, the Viking disappeared beneath the waves.
A total of 27 men and one dog had died on that ship.
King wrote,
“The old Viking, wreathed in a purple halo, was finishing her last cruise down beneath the ice-covered surface of the sea.”
Among the survivors on the ice was Pat Breen.
He had made his way to the main deck of the ship and helped men get off the ship before going back in to help others.
He also found Captain Kean on a piece of ice and helped him find the other survivors.
A small boat, called a dory, was sitting nearby and cleared of the wreckage.
Breen put the captain and another seriously injured man named Dick Adams in it then the survivors pushed the boat on the ice towards Horse Island for 15 kilometres.
Residents of the island were already aware something bad had happened.
They had just left evening church services and were walking home when they suddenly felt a small earthquake.
They looked out into the ocean and saw something burning on the water.
They realized it was a ship.
The wireless operator at the Horse Island Station was notified and he sent out a message calling for help.
Meanwhile, the survivors made their way to the island where they were met by a family who took them to the village.
Another telegraph was sent out, stating,
“Men continually landing. Around 20 dead, many injured.”
Two ships, the Foundation Franklin and Sagona, were dispatched.
The Sagona carried three doctors, two nurses and medical equipment.
While the men waited on Horse Island, locals fed them and treated injuries as best they could.
But three men were missing… King, Sargent and Kennedy were still floating somewhere in the icy water.
For days, Clayton King slipped in and out of consciousness. He was in terrible pain and severely injured.
Both of his legs were twisted in unnatural angles and badly broken. Both of his feet were gangrenous and suffering from frostbite.
One eye was injured, and he was seriously burned. Harry Sargent had a slight injury to one eye, while William Kennedy had severe burns.
On Horse Island, survivors told rescuers of the three survivors that had drifted away.
A wireless message was sent out stating,
“Six men left here to search for operator.”
Out at sea, Sargent saw steamers in the distance but had no way to signal their location.
Sometimes what he thought were steamers were nothing more than low clouds on the horizon.
As they waited for rescue, Sargent kept them hydrated by melting water in a tin can he had found.
On March 17, the three survivors were found by the SS Beothic, 25 kilometres from where the ship exploded.
King wrote,
“There was a ship drawing closer. My sight was not so bad that I could not see her now. Thank the Lord it was good enough for that. I wouldn’t wish to have missed it.”
Safely on SS Beothic, King saw his right leg was twisted up alongside his body, as the leg bone was exposed and had frost shining on the lacerated flesh.
Before he lost consciousness, he told the men to keep his watch but throw his clothes overboard, he never wanted to see them again.
Once the rescue ship reached shore, King was taken directly to the hospital and went through several operations.
Both his legs had to be amputated but a small projectile from the explosion remained buried in his head for the rest of his life.
He remained in hospital for X months until July of 1931.
Kennedy survived only long enough for the rescue ship to reach St. John’s before he died from his injuries and exposure.
Sargent simply walked away. He was one lucky man and the only one from the film crew to survive.
As newspaper reports went out, the number of dead was inflated. One newspaper reported 150 people dead.
The Prime Minister of Newfoundland, Sir Richard Squires, read a message to the House Assembly, stating,
“Portion crew, Viking arrived. Reporting men lying on ice floes, broke up.”
The Newfoundland government ordered a government commission to determine what had happened.
The commission ruled there was no definite cause and theorized that gunpowder was mishandled.
With most of the film crew dead, including producer Varick Frissell, the incident became the largest loss of life in film history.
But what happened to the film and the footage?
Despite the terrible loss of life, the movie was released in North America on June 21, 1931.
Titled The Viking, it received mixed reviews.
The New York Times called the story sketchy, but noted it had some marvelous scenes of the ice fields and men seal hunting.
Theatre Guild Magazine called it a melodramatic movie, with an uninteresting screenplay.
The Film Daily gave it a poor review, also citing the weakness of the story against the beautiful cinematography.
The director of the film, George Melford, was not on the Viking when it exploded, and went on to shoot seven more films between 1931 and 1937.
In 1939, he returned to acting and appeared in dozens of films in uncredited roles until 1960.
He died one year later in 1961 at the age of 84.
Louise Huntington, one of film’s stars, only appeared in two other films after The Viking.
Fair Warning and The Man Who Came Back, were both released in 1931.
She returned to Broadway and did some television work later in life and died on June 2, 1997, at the age of 92.
Charles Starrett, the other star of the Viking went on to appear in 131 Westerns over the next two decades, all with Columbia Pictures.
He retired in 1952 after his contract ended.
Independently wealthy from wise investments, he never returned to acting and died in 1986 at the age of 82.
Robert Bartlett, the famous captain from The Viking and Arctic hero, never appeared in another film.
In 1944, he was awarded the Peary Polar Expedition Medal.
He died in 1946 at the age of 70.
The Canadian Coast Guard vessel CCGS Bartlett is named for him, and Canada Post released a stamp to honour him in 2009.His childhood home Hawthorne Cottage, his family’s beloved homestead became a National Historic Site where today, you can get a unique insight into Newfoundland seafaring life and one of Canada’s legends of exploration.
