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Vol. 31, No. 4 (October 2000) Reprinted from "Admiralty Law in Popular Culture", a special issue published in 2000 by the Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce, a quarterly devoted to maritime law, with the permission of the Journal and the Jefferson Law Book Company. Sea TV: Admiralty Law on Television CHRISTINE A. CORCOS* I INTRODUCTION The "law of the sea" has been with us since the earliest days of television.1 Yet rarely do we see formal presentations of admiralty law.2 Television audiences simply do not learn much maritime law apart from a few traditional rules, which often are explained incorrectly or not at all. CRISES AT SEA examine the deeper implications of its subject matter, or to put a fresh spin on a legal issue, it almost always declines the invitation. A. Courts-Martial Without question, courts-martial are the maritime law topic that appears most often on television. In "Point of Law," a March 1976 episode of the NBC police drama McMillan and Wife, which starred Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James, for example, "Mac," a reserve Naval officer, defends a female officer accused of murder. More recently, in an October 1997 episode of NBC's Law & Order entitled "Navy Blues," Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy (Sam Waterson) finds himself battling the U.S. Navy for the right to try a naval aviator (Lt. Kirstin Blair, played by Kate Walsh) who he believes murdered her married lover while on shore leave. Not surprisingly, this always well-written series does an excellent job of comparing the distinct cultures, mores, and rules of the Manhattan District Attorney's office and the Judge Advocate General's corps. Seeking to capitalize on the public's interest in courts-martial, in 1995 NBC debuted the weekly series J * A * G. The show (seen on CBS since 1997) covers the waterfront, as it were, by mixing politics and law in nearly every episode. In a two-part installment which aired in September 1999 (entitled, respectively, "King of the Greenie Board" and "Rules of Engagement"), the show examines the legal and political effects of "friendly fire." When one of the characters accidentally fires on a Russian peace-keeping force in Kosovo, he demands that the show's hero lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Harmon "Harm" Rabb, Jr. (played by David James Elliott), who has personal knowledge of the incident, act as his attorney. This ethical conflict heightens the drama, of course, allowing the show to raise the possibility that lawyers routinely, if passively, allow miscarriages of justice. In a November 1999 episode entitled "Psychic Warrior," the focus is on the armed forces' reported experimentation with ESP and remote viewing, suggesting that JAG officers are sometimes forced to defend the misuse of taxpayer funds. The series regularly tracks such "hot topics." In the February 2000 episode "People v. Gunny," for example, the Clinton administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding homosexuals in the military is brought into question as various characters examine their attitudes toward a co-worker. Ultimately, however, J * A * G has evolved into more of a straight courtroom drama than a show featuring maritime law. Recurring situations involve courts-martial, often taken from current real life stories with which the audience is likely to be familiar. Thus, the amount of legal education dispensed is simply a repetition and amplification of what viewers have already received from network newscasts. B. Mutinies Because they generate the same sort of drama and conflict as courts-martial, television also has an affinity for mutinies. Regrettably, television writers have tended to view mutinies in extremely simple terms: they either are clearly justified (i.e., an obviously evil or crazy captain has forced the crew into an intolerable situation) or clearly unjustified (i.e., an obviously rapacious or easily-misled crew has refused to follow lawful orders). A notable exception is the March 1999 NBC television movie Mutiny, produced by noted black actor Morgan Freeman, which dramatized the Navy's 1944 Port Chicago uprising (in which black sailors refused to load dangerous cargo) and did an admirable job of exploring a seaman's right to question imprudent orders. C. Shipjackings Two made-for-television movies, NBC's The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro (1989), starring Lee Grant and Karl Malden, and the syndicated Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair (1990), with Eva Marie Saint and Burt Lancaster, took as their subject the real life terrorist takeover of an Italian cruise ship and the murder of one of its passengers, Leon Klinghoffer. In both versions, however, the emphasis is on politics rather than law. The February 1991 CBS mini-series And the Sea Will Tell features a seajacking and is based on the book of the same name by attorney Vincent Bugliosi (portrayed in the mini-series by Richard Crenna), who defended one of the accused. Reviews were mixed, and the drama focused on the mysterious disappearance of victims Mack and Muff Graham somewhere on or near the island of Palmyra, passing rather quickly over the question of jurisdiction to investigate the crime. D. Murders Murder at sea is a long-time television staple that usually occurs right under the nose of the ship's captain. In the 1977 pilot for ABC's successful show The Love Boat (1977-86), for example, Don Adams plays an unhappy husband who attempts, without success, to murder his wife so as to be able to marry his girlfriend. The captain and crew are blissfully unaware of his efforts, which include trying to drown her in the ship's pool and substituting real bullets for blanks in the prop weapons used by two of the ship's entertainers. Even when a ship's captain recognizes that something is amiss, he often delegates another character to investigate the circumstances (thereby helping to move the plot along and heighten the dramatic tension). Thus, for example, in the February 1975 Columbo episode "Troubled Waters," the good lieutenant (played, as always, by Peter Falk) finds himself in the middle of a murder mystery while vacationing aboard a cruise ship bound for Mexico. Because he is out of his jurisdiction, Columbo does not act until called upon by the ship's captain. Whether he must give the suspected killer, Hayden Danziger (Robert Vaughn), an American citizen, a Miranda warning at any time is a question left unanswered by the show's script. Columbo is not always so reticent, however. In the October 1971 episode "Dead Weight," he investigates the death of a Marine officer whose body has turned up in the bay. To find the killer, Columbo orders his men to search the boat of the leading suspect, Major General Martin Hollister (Eddie Albert), without obtaining either Hollister's permission or a search warrant. When questioned about the matter, the lieutenant inexplicably states that the men are not to bother about a warrant because Hollister "would probably allow a search of his home." E. Environmental Disasters Environmental law, when it deals with disasters at sea, weighs in with its own take on maritime law. The 1992 HBO movie Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster, starring John Heard and Christopher Lloyd, for example, focused on the problems inherent in delegating so much power to one person, who may not be able to control the vessel. Unfortunately, the otherwise-excellent film failed to explore the legal repercussions of the disaster. A number of weekly television series, such as NBC's Flipper (1964-68), NBC's seaQuest DSV (1993-95), and ABC's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68), also have set their story lines in or around the marine environment. Once again, legal issues are discussed only to the extent required to move the plot forward. F. Pirates, Smugglers, and Stowaways Pirates, smugglers, and stowaways all make regular television appearances, emerging in weekly series (e.g., CBS' The Aquanauts (1960-61)), mini-series (e.g., A & E's Horatio Hornblower (1999)), and made-for-television movies (e.g., HBO's Deadly Voyage (1996)). Each time, however, the emphasis is on adventure rather than the legal issues inherent in such settings. G. Hijinks at Sea Of course, many of the maritime crises seen on television are more laughable than tragic. In a well-known commercial that aired in the mid-1980s, for example, a seaman gravely reports that the ship's galley has run out of Colombian coffee. The captain, immediately recognizing the urgency of the situation, orders a 180 degree turn and heads back to port (where more of the precious commodity presumably awaits). The popular sitcom McHale's Navy, which aired on ABC from 1962 to 1966, featured Ernest Borgnine as Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale, the craftiest PT Boat officer in the South Pacific. In charge of the Navy's most outrageous crew, McHale spent the bulk of his time devising ways to outwit the Navy's upper echelons, who were represented in the show by the pompous Captain Wallace B. Binghamton (Joe Flynn) and his sycophantic sidekick Lieutenant Elroy Carpenter (Bob Hastings). Like the 1950s CBS comedy The Phil Silvers Show, whose star was the scheming army sergeant Ernie Bilko, McHale's Navy appealed to current and former enlisted men in the audience as it got in regular digs at military bureaucracy and protocol. McHale and his men regularly broke Navy rules while rarely paying the consequences, proving once again that America loves square pegs in round holes. Other maritime comedies that have graced the airwaves, such as CBS and ABC's The Gale Storm Show (1956-60) (with Gale Storm as cruise ship social director Susanna Pomeroy), CBS' The Baileys of Balboa (1964-65) (with Paul Ford as charter fishing boat captain Sam Bailey), NBC's C.P.O. Sharkey (1976-78) (with Don Rickles as U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Sharkey), CBS' Gilligan's Island (1964-67) (with Bob Denver as sightseeing boat first mate Gilligan), NBC's Mr. Roberts (1965-66) (with Roger Smith as naval lieutenant Douglas Roberts), and CBS' The Queen and I (1969) (with Larry Storch as cruise ship purser Charles Duffy), were no less absurd in either their premise or execution. CONCLUSION |
