Venture
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Don't let appearances deceive you, it's much more spacious on board.
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— Carl Denham tells Ann Darrow about the Venture (King Kong (2005)) |
The S.S. Venture is a fictional tramp steamer that appears in the 1933 film King Kong, its 1933 sequel Son of Kong, and its 2005 remake. In the 1932 King Kong novelization, it is called the S.S. Wanderer. Due to its name being present in the film and not the novelization, the "Venture" name is not considered public domain, and is thus not available for use in projects built off of the novelization's public domain status.
History
King Kong (1933)
After assembling a film crew, Carl Denham hired Captain Englehorn and his ship the Venture to sail to the uncharted Skull Island to film his newest picture. During the voyage, Denham's leading lady Ann Darrow began to form a romantic relationship with the Venture's first mate, Jack Driscoll. When the Venture reached Skull Island, it anchored near the shore while the crew went onto the island to explore. After the crew encountered the local natives and learned they wanted to sacrifice Ann to their god, Kong, they returned to the Venture. That night, a group of natives used canoes to approach the ship and captured Ann while she was on deck, then brought her back to the island to sacrifice her to Kong. When the crew found a bracelet left behind by the natives, they pursued them back onto the island. Eventually, after Jack rescued Ann from Kong and lured the beast back to the village, Denham and his crew used gas bombs to knock Kong unconscious. They then used the Venture to transport Kong back to New York, where he intended to display him on Broadway.
Son of Kong
Overwhelmed by lawsuits due to the destruction wrought by King Kong in New York, Carl Denham approached Captain Englehorn, who anticipated to receive similar lawsuits himself. Together, the two of them left New York on board the Venture once again and attempted to make money shipping cargo around the Pacific Ocean. After stopping at the Dutch port of Dakang, they met Nils Helstrom, a Norwegian captain who had sold Denham the map to Skull Island. Helstrom informed Denham of a hidden treasure on the island, and Denham, blinded by his financial situation, decided to return to the island and search for the treasure. Denham and Englehorn left for Skull Island on board the Venture, along with Hilda Petersen, a stowaway who worked in a sideshow in Dakang. On the way, a mutiny was staged on the Venture and Denham, Hilda, the cook Charlie and Englehorn were all set adrift.
King Kong (2005)
On the ship Venture, Captain Englehorn transported captured African and Asian animals, which he sold to zoos and circuses. Over the years, the vessel became dilapidated and covered in rust. Despite this, in 1933, Carl Denham approached the captain to take him and his film crew to the mysterious Skull Island. The ship set sail from New York City at night. Most of the passengers were accommodated in comfortable cabins, although lead actor Bruce Baxter did not approve of his cabin at first. The exception was writer Jack Driscoll, who was not originally supposed to be on the voyage, leaving him with no choice but to inhabit an empty animal transport cage.
Not far from Sumatra, Carl told the captain that it was time to turn southwest. The Venture followed the new course for some time, but then Englehorn received a message about a warrant for Carl's arrest and an order to sail to Rangoon. At night, the ship turned again and soon sailed into a cloud of inauspicious fog. The ocean floor began to rise, and when the fog cleared, the remains of a huge wall sticking out of the water appeared ahead. Frightened, Englehorn tried to stop the Venture, but was unable to prevent it from crashing into the wall, damaging the bow. Englehorn and the first mate, Ben Hayes, tried to steer the ship to safety, but as soon as it began to maneuver, Jack and Jimmy noticed dangerous rocky buttes around them. Intense darkness, fog, and huge waves made the appear situation hopeless. Unable to turn in time, the Venture collided with a massive rock with a carved face and became stuck there, now with several holes in its hull. The sailors sealed the breaches, and the ship remained off the coast of Skull Island for the next day, awaiting the high tide. After Denham and his crew visited the island, resulting in the deaths of two men at the hands of the Skull Islanders, the crew, obeying Englehorn's order, began to dump ballast from the ship in a last attempt to sail away from the rock. Pounded by rain and spray from the waves, they failed to notice a Skull Islander sneak onto the ship, kill another sailor, and kidnap actress Ann Darrow from her cabin to sacrifice her to the giant ape Kong. The Venture took off and left the dangerous labyrinth of rocks, but Jack, having found a bone ornament lost by the abductor, raised an alarm. Englehorn armed a rescue team and set off with it to the island in two boats. The Venture spent the next day at anchor at a safe distance from the rocks, then transported the captured Kong to New York.
Books
King Kong (2005)
The Venture was an old tramp steamer operated by Captain Englehorn and was so rusted, and moored in such a dilapidated dock, that a passerby might have thought it was abandoned and surprised to discover it was a seaworthy vessel.[3] Englehorn and his crew had built a reputation for their live animal trapping, and their inclination not to ask questions. In 1933, the ship set sail for Skull Island. On arriving, it became caught in thick fog before getting trapped between rocks to all sides. The Captain and crew tried to maneuver out of them, but the ship hit a reef and a hole was torn in its hull, which the crew worked frantically to repair while scuttled.
Comics
- Kong is King (2005)
- King Kong: The 8th Wonder of the World (2005)
King Kong: The 8th Wonder of the World
Guided by Captain Englehorn, the Venture was used to transport exotic animals to New York City. In 1933, Carl Denham's film crew set off on the ship to the uncharted Skull Island, though he told most of his staff they were sailing to Singapore. Having rounded Africa from the south, the ship turned north and one unfavorable night it encountered a cloud of fog. Before the captain and First Mate Ben Hayes could turn the ship around, it crashed into a giant, half-submerged wall on Skull Island, and then became stuck among the rocks in shallow water. The next day the sailors waited for the tide to sail out to the open sea. During this time, Carl Denham's group visited the island where they encountered hostile Skull Islanders, but were rescued by Englehorn's sailors just in time. During the night it began to rain and the captain ordered the ballast to be dumped from the ship. While everyone was busy with this work, Skull Islanders infiltrated the ship, killed two sailors, and kidnapped actress Ann Darrow as a sacrifice to Kong. Jack Driscoll reported what had happened and the crew set off for the island. The ship later transported Kong to New York City.
Trivia
- Two ships fill the role of the Venture in the 1976 remake of King Kong: the Petrox Explorer, which transports the crew to Skull Island, and the Susanne Onstad, which transports Kong to New York City.
- Ships named Venture appear in the 1997 film The Lost World: Jurassic Park and the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In the former, the Venture transports a Tyrannosaurus to San Diego; in the latter, it is part of an underwater ship graveyard. A massive cage rests on its deck, the door torn open. King Kong himself appears earlier in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow in silhouette, climbing the Empire State Building.
- The Venture in King Kong (2005) has "Surabaya" printed beneath its name, indicating that is it anchored in the Indonesian city from where the Petrox Explorer set sail in the 1976 King Kong remake.
- A ship called the Wanderer, the name of the Venture's equivalent in the original film's novelization, appears in Kong: Skull Island as a beached ship that was re-purposed by the Iwi into a shrine for Kong. Hank Marlow states that the Wanderer came to the island about a decade before his own arrival in 1944. The film's novelization makes the connection to the original story more explicit, with Bill Randa saying of Skull Island, "There's even talk of a movie crew disappearing out here in thirty-three."
References
This is a list of references for Venture. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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