The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. HE current con- trasts on British TV are strik- ing. Rhodes, twelve years in the making, ten episodes, nu- merous shorts that include hundreds of impis or miners, turn of the century South Af- rica and Lobengula's kraal lovingly reconstructed, two books as major spin off s, and a budget, according to the British press, of £10 million. Deadly Voyage, based on events that led to a trial in Rouen during December 1995, a one and a half hour'film for Saturday even ing TV,' with some early crowd scenes and thereafter a small - indeed a diminishing - cast locked in a ship, made on a budget, it seems, of £4 million. reviewer observes how the Screenplay, DEADLY outstanding) are rising stars with their own VOYAGE Shown on BBC 1 Deadly Voyage re- ceived the kind of publicity and attention from growing bands of followers - and, I am sure, fared on reviewers that its price-tag demanded. One their own razor-sharp agents. British can guess where part of the money went. The Guardian claimed to have broken television Some of the cast are pretty costly: Joss the story of the Ghanaian stowaways mur- and in Ackland's whisky captain can't have come dered by Ukrainian sailors on the MS Ruby the cheap, and from his Vlachos, a sort of Greek and tossed into the sea off Portugal during Poirot, David Suchet must have named a high 1992. Indeed on Friday 11 October the British price. Omar Epps, as Kingsley Ofosu stow- paper proclaimed that 'Journalist Nick Davies press. away on the run, and Sean Pertwee, as Lon uncovered the terrible story of murder on the Machiavellian first mate in pursuit, (both which Deadly Voyage is based.' But the film African Quarterly on the Arts Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA indicates that Kingsley Ofosu, the only Kingsley Ofosu and the other dock work- one of Ghanaians to survive the 'Ship of r ii ndced on Friday 11 ers who stowaway with him. In a style Death'/ 'uncovered' the story himself af- October the paper that occasionally uses broad gestures ter jumping ship in Le Havre. Attempts to proclaimed that *Jour- and exaggeration background is claim exclusive rights to the tale should nalist Nick Davies sketched in. Thus, for example, we learn be resisted! about Kingsley Ofosu's circumstances uncovered the terrible as brother, dock worker, father-to-be To bring 'The Ship of Death' to the story of murder on screen, expansion of'Ofosu YStory' was and lottery winner. In the course of the which Deadly Voyage inevitable. While the grit and determina- first two thirds or so of the film there are tion, the improvisation and resourceful- is based.' But the film brief opportunities to discover what the ness were Ofosu's, he was only part of indicates that Kingsley members of the group share, and in what happened. The film's credits ac- Ofosu. the only one of what ways they differ. We are shown knowledged his contribution - and that of Ghanaians to survive the poverty and the sense of community Davies. However, in the course of the the'Ship of Death.' of the Takoradi from which the young film, audiences were left in no doubt that 'uncovered* the story men seek to escape, and watch them other resources had been tapped, and, himself after jumping loading the cocoa beans that reveal the at the end, they were informed that the ship in Le Havre. rawness of the 'material' being exported. script had been developed with support Attempts to claim All dream of escaping to the United from the European Script Fund and that exclusive rights to the States as to a Land of Opportunity, but the script-writer had drawn on his own tale should be resisted! particular aspirations vary and include research. We also read: 'some dialogue, becoming a nurse, a heavy-weight events and characters have been cre- boxer, and a taxi driver. The group is learn carrying stowaways may mean ated for dramatic purposes.' presented as fairly ordinary, not without heavy fines for shipping lines-that these human weaknesses but with resources Ofosu's story, and particularly the are only sometimes paid by insurance of dignity and courage. account of the four days and nights he companies and that crews may be pun- spent on the run after his companions ished. Whether this is an accurate sum- Joss Ackland's character is devel- had been murdered and before the ship mary of the existing situation, I do not oped in particular detail, as an honoured reached Le Havre, made the tense climax know, but it is the exposition provided for veteran of the Russian Navy, a grandfa- of the film, but it was combined with other the film and it impresses on audiences the therly figure, with a dependence on people's stories. The film introduced vulnerable position in which the Captain alcohol and a tendency to abdicate Ofosu's Ghanaian companions, and and crew of M S Ruby found themselves. moral responsibility at key moments. explored the experiences, perhaps imag- It also emphasises the dangers of stow- Much of this emerged in scenes he ined, perhaps linked in some way with ing away. Later in the film there are shares with Vlachos, representative of a fact, of the ship's captain, of Vlachos, suggestions that stowaways might be Greek shipping line and, within the and of some members of the crew. Ships allowed to 'work their passages' or pay structureof the film, of much else. Vlachos can easily be seen as microcosms, and their way - but these options are not does not have a personal story to tell, there were senses in which script-writer considered seriously. indeed sometimes it seems his purpose Stuart Urban and director John Mackenzie Other factors that contributed to on the ship is simply to represent capital- used the MS Ruby to provide insights into the vulnerability of the ship's crew were ism and sustain dramatic tension. A the new world (dis)order, an arrange- linked to the fragmentation of socialist potential nemesis, he inspires fear- or at ment that carries much 'cargo' from old republics and the rampant position of world 'orders' and that offers little hope least caution - in the murderous crew. capitalism. It seems - the details are not to many hundreds of millions on this His presence among Russian and Ukrai- made entirely clear - that, at least for the planet. nians also, conveniently, makes it cred- purposes of the film, following the frag- ible that English might be used for key The context for the presentation of mentation of the Soviet Union, M S Ruby, exchanges. what happened on the M S Ruby on the a Russian ship, became part of the Greek voyage from Takoradi to Le Havre was Some of the members of the crew shipping empire, and that it was crewed provided by an opening sequence set in are touched by compassion and human by Ukrainians. New York which showed stowaways feelings, others have been brutalized by trying to escape from the ship. From that After the'international context'has the system and have been hardened been established, the film moves to event and the discussion about it, we against appeals to their humanity by Takoradi. There the camera seeks out racism. They are 'poor bastards' in African Quarterly on the Arts GLENDORA Vol. 2/No. 1 many ways as abused by the system as Even on the small screen, Deadly the Ghanaians they massacre. Reveal- Voyage had tremendous power to move. ingly, they spend their idle moments in atthew Bond Christina Odone reflected the experi- horseplay by the pool and in shooting shared with readers ence of many when she wrote in the water melons held by a companion. In of The Times (14 Daily Telegraph 'I have been wrung dry a telling touch, one of the sailors is seen October) his feeling for ninety minutes of nail biting tension.' playing with the 'Gameboy' that a stow- that 'for a film based But it also confused. The same critic away had carried on board. But, al- heavily on recent claimed that she heard that 'at $3 per though they are underdogs like the hour (Ghanaians) were paid three times Ghanaians, they know how to play the and real murders, it as much as the sailors.' What I think skin card, and, when his part in the was just too slick, came across - in a crucial exchange that murder has been revealed, we hear Lon too exciting to be should have been clearer - was that, if excusing his action to a French official palatable.' Once the Ukrainians lost their jobs as sailors, by pleading: 'We were trying to do again, this draws they would be competing for work in the France a favour. We executed them.' attention, I suspect, Ukraine where they could earn only one Observations like this make the freighter dollar a day. The idea that a Ghanaian both a mass of metal with many places to the shift in genre worker could command a wage of $3 to hide and a microcosm in which the from docudrama to an hour shows just how out of touch hunters and the hunted have truly been action movie, that Telegraph reviewers are and how 'se- set against one another.