Deadly Voyage
Encyclopedia
Deadly Voyage is a 1996 television film directed by John Mackenzie and written by Stuart Urban
. Produced by Union Pictures and John Goldschmidt's Viva Films for joint distribution to BBC Films
and HBO Films
, it tells the true story of Kingsley Ofosu
, the sole survivor of a group of nine African
stowaway
s discovered aboard the cargo ship McRuby in 1992 and subsequently murdered by that ship's crew.It is also a book.
, six stowaways burst from one of the containers being unloaded. They flee from the ship, but are apprehended by dock workers and the New York police. The McRuby' s Ukrainian
crew watches the detention with some amusement, but the ship's captain and his first mate, Ion Plesin, are displeased, aware that the illegal immigrants will cost the shipping company hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. In response, company representative Andreas Vlachos arrives to oversee future operations and warn that the crew will be liable for any more such fines.
Later, the McRuby is docked in Ghana
, where dock worker Kingsley Ofosu
plans to some day stow away aboard a cargo ship to pursue a better life for himself and his pregnant wife in the United States
. Upon winning a lottery
, he decides that the time is right, as he can use the money to get on his feet upon his arrival. Ofosu, his brother and six other men slip aboard the McRuby and hide in its cargo holds. With the ship behind schedule, Plesin has only one hour to conduct a stowaway search prior to departure. The hasty endeavor fails to turn up Ofosu's group and the ship sails, bound for France
, prior to sailing on to New York.
Ofosu's group encounters another stowaway, who had boarded the ship in Cameroon
. The men jovially discuss the vocations they intend to pursue in the United States. Later, their water container breaks, forcing them to leave the cargo area to forage for food and water. They leave evidence of the presence, which is then discovered by the crew. To prevent Vlachos from learning that the stowaway search had been incomplete, the captain has Plesin assemble a small team to conduct a secret perquisition.
The stowaways are found and Plesin discusses the predicament with the captain. Given the illegal immigrant fines, they cannot bring the stowaways into port. However, they also cannot alter course to drop the men off somewhere, as Vlachos would then find out about them. The Africans are taken to be hidden within the ship's anchor hold. When they object, they find Plesin unsympathetic to their desire to escape poverty. He points out that if the stowaways' presence becomes known, he and his men will be fired, and any other jobs they can find in Ukraine will pay even less than the meager wages earned by Ofosu on the docks in Ghana. The stowaways are forced into the hold and initially left without food or water. Mikhael, one of Plesin's men, takes pity and secretly delivers them a little water, but he is powerless to do more. As the stowaways suffer, Ofosu laments that he has led the group to their deaths.
The captain finally acquiesces to Plesin's plan to kill the stowaways. The men are taken from the hold in small groups. As each group is brought into another area, they are ambushed and their bodies thrown overboard. Mikhael tries to stop the massacre, but the others overpower and subdue him. Ofosu and his brother are the last two brought out, but they surmise what is about to occur and make a run for it, heading in different directions. As they do, Ofosu's brother is shot and, with his injury, is soon caught and thrown overboard as Ofosu watches. Ofosu flees back below decks to hide and is able to elude further searches for him. While in the cargo hold, Ofosu stashes a picture of himself and his wife inside one of the cocoa sacks.
Plesin's men are concerned about their inability to locate their final stowaway, but they reason that all Western
countries despise black
immigrants and thus no one will be motivated to take action against them. They also expect to be able to secure him upon reaching port when he tries to exit the ship. However, once the ship docks, Ofosu is able to escape to shore and make it to the police before Plesin's men can catch him.
The next day, French authorities board the McRuby to investigate Ofosu's story. Plesin first denies that there had been any stowaway, but the ship's cocoa sacks are searched, yielding Ofosu's picture. Plesin's final play is to acknowledge the killings but to suggest that he and his men had done France a favor by preventing undesirable blacks from entering the country illegally. The police are unimpressed by this rationale and immediately arrest Plesin and his men, along with the captain.
The film ends with Ofosu on the phone with his wife, hearing the cries of his newborn son, whom he pledges to name after his brother. An epilogue notes that the captain and first mate were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Three other crew members were also convicted and received 20-year sentences, while one crew member was acquitted. Kingsley Ofosu was living in France and hoping to have his wife and child join him.
US Peace Corps Volunteers in Ghana were recruited as extras to play the ships crew members, although many of these scenes do not appear in the final production.
The screenplay for Deadly Voyage was written by Stuart Urban
, who used interviews with Ofosu as his primary source material. Urban was also originally slated to direct, but when he took ill, John Mackenzie was brought in to replace him. The movie was filmed in England
and in Ghana
.
Producer John Goldschmidt noted that the Ghana portion of the shoot was particularly challenging, with weather that was extremely hot and humid and multiple crew members coming down with malaria
or dysentery
. There were also many logistical problems, as Ghana lacked an infrastructure conducive to executing principal photography
for a major motion picture. Goldschmidt said that the original plan had been to film in South Africa
, since that country was more "geared up for this sort of thing", being a location often used for major films set in Africa. However, the decision was made to film in Ghana for the sake of authenticity, and despite the difficulties, Goldschmidt felt that that genuineness shone through in the finished work.
Omar Epps
, the film's star, spoke a bit more positively about his experience in Ghana. He said that he was able to spend a good deal of time with Ofosu in preparing for the role. Epps also said that he had learned to speak a little bit of Twi
.
In 2006, Ofosu expressed doubt that he had received fair compensation from Union Pictures for the film. He said that he had received $67,500 USD, but that that sum had been based on a estimate of the film's total production costs, of which he was to receive 1.5%. Ofosu claimed he'd never been given an accounting of the final production costs to determine if he was owed more. He also said that he was to receive 10% of the movie's net profits and, but that he had never seen any payment along those lines. Union Pictures (which had gone bankrupt by that time) co-producer Bradley Adams pointed the finger at HBO and the BBC, saying that he also had never seen any accounting of profits or total budget figures from the two companies.
were somewhat distressing to watch, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel labeled it an "effective film". The Daytona Beach News-Journal called it a "well-crafted drama" made all the more disturbing by the fact that observering Ofosu's true story was much like watching a fictional thriller film. The Kansas City Star branded it a "tough, provocative docudrama
".
The New York Times
, however, was more critical, offering that the film was "not a great movie" and declaring that most of its characters were "little more than stick figures". Nonetheless, the paper did see the movie as "nightmarishly harrowing", calling it a "searing descent into human cruelty", and praising the performances of Epps and Pertwee as the film's primary protagonist and antagonist respectively.
Stuart Urban
Stuart Urban is a British film and television director. At the age of thirteen in 1972, he became the youngest director to have a film shown at the Cannes Film Festival with his short feature The Virus of War...
. Produced by Union Pictures and John Goldschmidt's Viva Films for joint distribution to BBC Films
BBC Films
BBC Films is the feature film-making arm of the BBC. It has produced or co-produced some of the most successful British films of recent years, including An Education, StreetDance 3D, Fish Tank, Stage Beauty, A Cock and Bull Story, Nativity! and Match Point.It aims to make strong British films with...
and HBO Films
HBO Films
HBO Films is a division of the cable television network HBO that produces feature films and miniseries. While much of HBO Films' output is created directly for the television market, such as the film Witness Protection and the mini-series Band of Brothers, Pacific, Generation Kill and Angels in...
, it tells the true story of Kingsley Ofosu
Kingsley Ofosu
Kingsley Ofosu is a Ghanaian who made international news in 1992, when he survived the slaughter of a group African stowaways by the crew of the Bahamian-flagged cargo ship McRuby. In all, eight men were killed, including Ofosu’s brother...
, the sole survivor of a group of nine African
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
stowaway
Stowaway
A stowaway is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as an aircraft, bus, ship, cargo truck or train, to travel without paying and without being detected....
s discovered aboard the cargo ship McRuby in 1992 and subsequently murdered by that ship's crew.It is also a book.
Plot
Aboard the cargo ship McRuby, docked in New YorkNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, six stowaways burst from one of the containers being unloaded. They flee from the ship, but are apprehended by dock workers and the New York police. The McRuby
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
crew watches the detention with some amusement, but the ship's captain and his first mate, Ion Plesin, are displeased, aware that the illegal immigrants will cost the shipping company hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. In response, company representative Andreas Vlachos arrives to oversee future operations and warn that the crew will be liable for any more such fines.
Later, the McRuby is docked in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, where dock worker Kingsley Ofosu
Kingsley Ofosu
Kingsley Ofosu is a Ghanaian who made international news in 1992, when he survived the slaughter of a group African stowaways by the crew of the Bahamian-flagged cargo ship McRuby. In all, eight men were killed, including Ofosu’s brother...
plans to some day stow away aboard a cargo ship to pursue a better life for himself and his pregnant wife in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Upon winning a lottery
Lottery
A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments...
, he decides that the time is right, as he can use the money to get on his feet upon his arrival. Ofosu, his brother and six other men slip aboard the McRuby and hide in its cargo holds. With the ship behind schedule, Plesin has only one hour to conduct a stowaway search prior to departure. The hasty endeavor fails to turn up Ofosu's group and the ship sails, bound for France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, prior to sailing on to New York.
Ofosu's group encounters another stowaway, who had boarded the ship in Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
. The men jovially discuss the vocations they intend to pursue in the United States. Later, their water container breaks, forcing them to leave the cargo area to forage for food and water. They leave evidence of the presence, which is then discovered by the crew. To prevent Vlachos from learning that the stowaway search had been incomplete, the captain has Plesin assemble a small team to conduct a secret perquisition.
The stowaways are found and Plesin discusses the predicament with the captain. Given the illegal immigrant fines, they cannot bring the stowaways into port. However, they also cannot alter course to drop the men off somewhere, as Vlachos would then find out about them. The Africans are taken to be hidden within the ship's anchor hold. When they object, they find Plesin unsympathetic to their desire to escape poverty. He points out that if the stowaways' presence becomes known, he and his men will be fired, and any other jobs they can find in Ukraine will pay even less than the meager wages earned by Ofosu on the docks in Ghana. The stowaways are forced into the hold and initially left without food or water. Mikhael, one of Plesin's men, takes pity and secretly delivers them a little water, but he is powerless to do more. As the stowaways suffer, Ofosu laments that he has led the group to their deaths.
The captain finally acquiesces to Plesin's plan to kill the stowaways. The men are taken from the hold in small groups. As each group is brought into another area, they are ambushed and their bodies thrown overboard. Mikhael tries to stop the massacre, but the others overpower and subdue him. Ofosu and his brother are the last two brought out, but they surmise what is about to occur and make a run for it, heading in different directions. As they do, Ofosu's brother is shot and, with his injury, is soon caught and thrown overboard as Ofosu watches. Ofosu flees back below decks to hide and is able to elude further searches for him. While in the cargo hold, Ofosu stashes a picture of himself and his wife inside one of the cocoa sacks.
Plesin's men are concerned about their inability to locate their final stowaway, but they reason that all Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
countries despise black
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
immigrants and thus no one will be motivated to take action against them. They also expect to be able to secure him upon reaching port when he tries to exit the ship. However, once the ship docks, Ofosu is able to escape to shore and make it to the police before Plesin's men can catch him.
The next day, French authorities board the McRuby to investigate Ofosu's story. Plesin first denies that there had been any stowaway, but the ship's cocoa sacks are searched, yielding Ofosu's picture. Plesin's final play is to acknowledge the killings but to suggest that he and his men had done France a favor by preventing undesirable blacks from entering the country illegally. The police are unimpressed by this rationale and immediately arrest Plesin and his men, along with the captain.
The film ends with Ofosu on the phone with his wife, hearing the cries of his newborn son, whom he pledges to name after his brother. An epilogue notes that the captain and first mate were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Three other crew members were also convicted and received 20-year sentences, while one crew member was acquitted. Kingsley Ofosu was living in France and hoping to have his wife and child join him.
Cast
- Omar EppsOmar EppsOmar Hashim Epps is an American actor, singer, songwriter, and record producer. His film roles include Major League II, Juice, Higher Learning, Scream 2, The Wood, In Too Deep, and Love and Basketball. Epps' television work includes the role of Dr. Dennis Gant on the US medical drama series ER,...
as Kingsley OfosuKingsley OfosuKingsley Ofosu is a Ghanaian who made international news in 1992, when he survived the slaughter of a group African stowaways by the crew of the Bahamian-flagged cargo ship McRuby. In all, eight men were killed, including Ofosu’s brother... - Joss AcklandJoss AcklandSidney Edmond Jocelyn Ackland CBE , known as Joss Ackland, is an English actor who has appeared in more than 130 films and numerous television roles.-Early life:...
as the ship's captain - Sean PertweeSean PertweeSean Pertwee is an English actor known for his television, film and voice-over work.-Career:In the early 80s, he auditioned for a place at the Surrey County Youth Theatre where he was cast as Captain Fitzpatrick in the play Tom Jones, based on the novel by Henry Fielding...
as Ion Plesin - David SuchetDavid SuchetDavid Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...
as Andreas Vlachos
US Peace Corps Volunteers in Ghana were recruited as extras to play the ships crew members, although many of these scenes do not appear in the final production.
Production
When the trial of the crew members made international headlines, multiple film companies approached Ofosu to purchase the rights to his story. He eventually struck a deal with Union Pictures and Viva Films. The Union Pictures/Viva Films production was to be distributed to and financed by HBO and the BBC.The screenplay for Deadly Voyage was written by Stuart Urban
Stuart Urban
Stuart Urban is a British film and television director. At the age of thirteen in 1972, he became the youngest director to have a film shown at the Cannes Film Festival with his short feature The Virus of War...
, who used interviews with Ofosu as his primary source material. Urban was also originally slated to direct, but when he took ill, John Mackenzie was brought in to replace him. The movie was filmed in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
.
Producer John Goldschmidt noted that the Ghana portion of the shoot was particularly challenging, with weather that was extremely hot and humid and multiple crew members coming down with malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
or dysentery
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...
. There were also many logistical problems, as Ghana lacked an infrastructure conducive to executing principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
for a major motion picture. Goldschmidt said that the original plan had been to film in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, since that country was more "geared up for this sort of thing", being a location often used for major films set in Africa. However, the decision was made to film in Ghana for the sake of authenticity, and despite the difficulties, Goldschmidt felt that that genuineness shone through in the finished work.
Omar Epps
Omar Epps
Omar Hashim Epps is an American actor, singer, songwriter, and record producer. His film roles include Major League II, Juice, Higher Learning, Scream 2, The Wood, In Too Deep, and Love and Basketball. Epps' television work includes the role of Dr. Dennis Gant on the US medical drama series ER,...
, the film's star, spoke a bit more positively about his experience in Ghana. He said that he was able to spend a good deal of time with Ofosu in preparing for the role. Epps also said that he had learned to speak a little bit of Twi
Twi
Asante, or Ashanti, is one of three literary dialects of the Akan language of southern Ghana, and the prestige dialect of that language. It is spoken in and around Kumasi, the capital of the former Ashanti Empire and current subnational Asante Kingdom within Ghana.Along with the Akuapem dialect,...
.
In 2006, Ofosu expressed doubt that he had received fair compensation from Union Pictures for the film. He said that he had received $67,500 USD, but that that sum had been based on a estimate of the film's total production costs, of which he was to receive 1.5%. Ofosu claimed he'd never been given an accounting of the final production costs to determine if he was owed more. He also said that he was to receive 10% of the movie's net profits and, but that he had never seen any payment along those lines. Union Pictures (which had gone bankrupt by that time) co-producer Bradley Adams pointed the finger at HBO and the BBC, saying that he also had never seen any accounting of profits or total budget figures from the two companies.
Reception
Newspaper reviews of Deadly Voyage were largely positive. Noting that its depictions of man's inhumanity to manMan's inhumanity to man
The phrase "Man's inhumanity to man" is first documented in my balls]] poem called Man was made to mourn: A Dirge in 1784. It is possible that Burns reworded a similar quote from Samuel von Pufendorf who in 1673 wrote, "More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature's...
were somewhat distressing to watch, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel labeled it an "effective film". The Daytona Beach News-Journal called it a "well-crafted drama" made all the more disturbing by the fact that observering Ofosu's true story was much like watching a fictional thriller film. The Kansas City Star branded it a "tough, provocative docudrama
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
".
The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, however, was more critical, offering that the film was "not a great movie" and declaring that most of its characters were "little more than stick figures". Nonetheless, the paper did see the movie as "nightmarishly harrowing", calling it a "searing descent into human cruelty", and praising the performances of Epps and Pertwee as the film's primary protagonist and antagonist respectively.