Ghost Ship
FADE IN:
INT. BARGE - DAY
Crewman EPPS (29), wearing a life vest and tool belt, jumps
down into the darkness. She stands in a great hollow cavern,
oily, wet, resonant with the sound of creaking, rusty steel
and WATER MOVING OVER ITS HULL on the other side.
Epps comes to a low point in the darkness, shining her light
on a lake of salt water sloshing against the bulkhead. She
kneels. As the water sloshes back she sees that it is leaking
in through the seams in the steel plate of the hull.
Epps pulls herself onto the deck from below. She stands on a
rusting 5000 ton tank barge being pulled in the open ocean
by a brawny marine tug at the end of a 150 foot tow cable.
It is a typical summer day in the southern Bering Sea, which
means a healthy chop and a stiff cold breeze out of the north-
west. She closes the hatch behind her and makes her way
forward.
EXT. BARGE - BOW - MOMENTS LATER - DAY
Up ahead, the tug pulls steadily, grey-black clouds of diesel
smoke rising from its massive turbine vents.
Epps cinches and checks her body harness, focused and
professional. The product of a rocky childhood in the Pacific
Northwest and a few years of hard living, she's found her
true calling now. And under some grime, several polypro shirts
and a pair of orange men's Insulite pants she might even be
considered pretty.
She clips her harness into the tow cable where it attaches
to a heavy pair of eye cleats at the bow. She climbs onto
the cable, hanging out over the water as it breaks on the
bow beneath her. She pulls herself forward on a roller bearing
that fits over the width of the cable and starts off toward
the tug at the other end.
EXT. ARCTIC WARRIOR - LATER - DAY
DODGE and GREER look on from the stern, where the boat's
name "Arctic Warrior" is emblazoned on the transom. Dodge
(37), scruffy chief engineer, wearing de rigueur greasy
coveralls and nicotine stained fingers, is an expatriate
Texan and former merchant marine. GREER (42), is the boat's
first mate, African American, originally from some sweltering
red-neck hellhole, now a tug pilot intentionally well to the
north.
They watch as Epps pulls herself toward them, the cable
occasionally dipping a few feet with a spray of water as a
passing swell slackens it. Epps pulls herself to the stern
where the cable winds into a tow anchor.
EPPS:
It's a slow leak.
She unclips and drops to the deck.
GREER:
What's slow?
EPPS:
Maybe twenty gallons an hour.
DODGE:
Where from?
EPPS:
Amidships starboard at the beam.
Just under the waterline. I don't
think it's a problem.
GREER:
Hear that, Dodge? Epps don't think
it's a problem.
DODGE:
I'll sleep good tonight knowing that.
INT. ARCTIC WARRIOR - PILOTHOUSE - CONTINUOUS - DAY
The view from the pilothouse commands 360 degrees as radar
and GPS navigation displays glow. MURPHY, the ship's master,
pilots the boat. He is 48, at sea all his adult life, and
most of the rest, a fact written on his face and one that
every crewman who's ever worked for him has been willing to
bet his life on. A walkie-talkie CRACKLES AWAKE.
GREER (V.O. RADIO)
Greer to Murphy.
MURPHY:
(lifting the radio)
Go.
Murphy turns back to see Greer, Epps, and Dodge looking up
at him from the stern.
GREER:
The number nine on the starboard
side's half flooded. Epps says it's
a slow leak just under the waterline,
about twenty gallons an hour. They
must've pumped it before we left
Sitka.
MURPHY:
Of course they did.
GREER:
Let the buyer beware.
MURPHY:
What do you say, Dodge?
DODGE (V.O. RADIO)
(taking the radio)
If it started out at twenty an hour
the piece of sh*t'd be at the bottom
of the Gulf by now. Whether it'll
make St. Lawrence is anybody's guess.
EXT. OPEN OCEAN - DAY
HIGH AND WIDE as the Arctic Warrior pulls the barge against
the swell of a grey ocean and a darkening sky.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. PORT GERMAINE - ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND - DAY
The shores of St. Lawrence Island open into a small port
town of mainly pre-fab buildings as the Arctic Warrior
approaches with the barge, now pathetically listing to one
side as it moves into the harbor.
EXT. PORT GERMAINE - DOCKS - LATER - DAY
A smaller harbor tug helps the Arctic Warrior jockey the
listing barge to the dock as Epps and Dodge jump off to tie
her up.
INT. ARCTIC WARRIOR - PILOTHOUSE - MOMENTS LATER - DAY
Greer feathers the tug into position and shuts down the
turbines.
EXT. ARCTIC WARRIOR - CONTINUOUS - DAY
Murphy jumps down from the pilothouse to the deck as a fat
Russian man, Vasili (60) and a MECHANIC in grease-covered
orange coveralls approach from the dock.
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"Ghost Ship" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/ghost_ship_362>.
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