On the Frontenac, Summer 1939.

As mentioned in the first Evangeline post, Capt. Bill's position as master of various freighters permitted him to take family and other guests on the ships' voyages. As a follow-up, Chuck O'Malley has sent an outstanding video clip with scenes from one such voyage — on the Frontenac in the summer of 1939. The cinematographer is Capt. Bill's son-in-law Bob O'Malley Sr. The cast includes Cap and three of his children: Eileen, Dorothy (in the black-and-white plaid), and Tom. But the star is either a very young Shirley Temple or else Bob and Eileen's daughter Sharon O'Malley Cassidy.


The clip is immediately below. Alternatively, click here to view it in what may be a larger playback window, depending on your browser. In any case, be sure to turn the sound on for optimum viewing enjoyment.

A few notes:

• Observing the energy that the Mooney sisters (Eileen and Dorothy) devoted to avoiding the camera, Chuck O'Malley says, "one might think that Captain Bill was transporting mafiosos and their molls to Canada." Sharon O'Malley Cassidy, on the other hand, suggests that "those Mooney girls must have been in the Witness Protection Program."

• Neither Chuck nor Sharon (nor I) knows the identities of the couple and the young man walking the length of the deck starting at around 1:46 in the clip. It comes as no surprise to Chuck O'Malley that the unidentified lady is sporting a substantial string of pearls. In that regard, Chuck mentions the formality of Capt. Bill's usual attire, and he points out that Tom Mooney is wearing a suit while playing with Sharon in the playpen (starting at about 2:06). Moreover, he says (attaching the picture below):

I believe dinner on the boat was quite formal.  Captain Bill once took me to have dinner on one of his ships while in dock.  I remember a fancy room, fine China and silverware as far as I could see to the left and right of my plate.  The steward who took my order, also dressed to the nines, had a napkin folded over his forearm.  Overwhelmed, I think I went for the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The Captain's dining room on the Cleveland-Cliffs freighter Willis B. Mather.
(The Mather — including the dining room — is now preserved as a museum
at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Thank you to
Chuck for the picture and to Sharon for the link.)

Frontenac pilothouse, Fairport Harbor.
(Photo courtesy of Ohio History Connection.)

• Capt. Bill was master of the Frontenac from 1933 to 1942. The ship was grounded during a storm in 1979, and then scrapped when she was found to have been damaged beyond repair. Her pilothouse (in which Capt. Bill is shown standing at the beginning of the video clip and again at about 1:30) was salvaged and is now a part of the Fairport Harbor Marine Museum & Lighthouse in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. 


• When Eileen O'Malley visited the museum in the 1990s, she pointed out to the staff that their reconstruction was not entirely authentic: they had done a good job with almost everything, she said, but they were missing the spittoon that was a standard feature of the pilothouse in Eileen's (and Capt. Bill's) lake-faring days.

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Interior of the Frontenac pilothouse, Fairport Harbor.
(Photo courtesy of TripAdvisor.)

• Chuck advises that the clip is a third- or fourth-generation transfer: the original 8 mm film was converted to VHS forty years ago, then the VHS to DVD and, finally, the DVD to mp4.