"Down to the Sea in Ships" - Silent Film with Live Piano Accompaniment

Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), directed by Elmer Clifton and filmed in New Bedford, Massachusetts, is a full feature silent film that will be screened in Thacher Hall with musical score performed live at a grand piano by Dr. Jennifer A. Maxwell, a Grammy-nominated classical concert pianist. Enjoy refreshments and a pre-concert talk delivered by Richard T. Porteus, President of Row New Bedford Foundation.

This concert benefits Thacher Hall and the 2nd Annual Cape Cod Beach Sprints Regatta, sponsored by Row New Bedford, an organizational member of USRowing, the national governing body of the sport. The regatta will take place Saturday-Sunday, September 12-13, 2026 at Seagull Beach in Yarmouth MA. Learn more about Beach Sprints, and New England’s rowing + whaling history below..

About the Film

Down to the Sea in Ships was a blockbuster back in the day. With its theme of whaling and its inclusion of the only legally filmed whale hunt in cinema history, the film is a brilliant record of local maritime heritage. It contains semi-documentary footage of whalers at work, shot on historic locations in the New Bedford area featuring landmarks including the Quaker Meeting House, Seamen’s Bethel, and the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, on exhibit at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. The film’s title cards contain quotes from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Alexander Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery. The authenticity of the whaling scenes is lauded in the opening screen credits, which praise the bravery of both A.G. Penrod and Paul H. Allen, the cameramen, “who, in small boats, stood by their cameras at the risk of their lives to photograph the fighting whales.” Down to the Sea in Ships also is notable for featuring the debut of flapper IT girl movie star Clara Bow.

About the Score

Using some archival material from the film’s 1922 premiere at the Olympia Theater in New Bedford and some original material, Maxwell created a theme for each character (hero’s theme, villain’s theme, etc.) and each type of action (love theme, whaling theme, etc.). She also utilized some vintage tunes that would have been recognizable in the day, weaving them in with the original music to give a period feeling. These are all cued to the relevant sections, composed in keys that segue appropriately, and timed precisely to fit the scenes – all with the purpose of underscoring the narrative and providing cohesion in a medium in which there is no dialogue. The result is a musical score that is vibrantly connected with the film itself, performed dynamically in concert with the film.

About Beach Sprints

Beach sprints are a relatively new, high-energy, spectator-friendly variation on traditional rowing races that welcomes the wind and waves of coastal conditions. In beach sprints, two competitors go head-to-head, sprinting to the water’s edge, rowing a 150-meter slalom course around three buoys, reversing course, rapidly pulling for shore, beaching their boats without slowing down, scrambling ashore, and sprinting to the finish line before diving across to smack a small red buzzer lodged in the sand. Beach sprints will be debuting as an Olympic event at the 2026 Youth Olympics this November in Dakkar, Senegal, and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

During this 250th anniversary of the United States, the 2nd Annual Cape Cod Beach Sprints celebrates the contribution, equal to 20% of GDP, of the whaling industry to the economic growth of the Early Republic. In doing so, the Cape Cod regatta highlights the historic connection between the whaling communities of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and New Bedford.

About Whaling

In 1690, Yarmouth native Ichabod Paddock, a central figure in Cape Cod history and recognized as the preeminent shore whaler of his day, was contracted to bring whaling from Yarmouth to Nantucket, thus rescuing the island from economic stagnation. Paddock taught the islanders to hunt close to shore, using small boats launched directly from the beach to chase whales spotted from lookout towers. In 1712, Christopher Hussey of Nantucket reputedly discovered the offshore sperm fishery. Then, in 1765, Joseph Rotch of Nantucket shifted the epicenter of whaling from Nantucket Harbor to the deeper harbor and connecting railheads of New Bedford. New Bedford’s expansion of whaling into the first global industry earned the “Whaling City” acknowledgement as “the City that lit the world.” At its peak in the mid-nineteenth century, whaling represented the fifth-largest sector of the American economy.