FRIDAY, 18 september 1942

First day of shooting

UNIT CALL. On the Jetty. 8.30.

CAST CALL. On the Jetty. 9.00.

I did not have one of my best nights, and when the alarm went off at 6.45, I was wide awake—had been for some time. What was the weather like? I went to the window and pulled back the curtains. It was promising in so far as it wasn't raining and it wasn't blowing a gale. Luck, but then it was the 17th when we arrived and I like 7s. It was seven months since I trundled down Southend Pier. Holy heavens, we were going to make a start. We would be turning over and this time it was for real.

Shortly, we would be making ready and down those treacherous steps would go the two heavy service batteries. The two lamps. The camera. The blimp. The film magazine cases. The light cables. The 24 members of the cast. The three on the camera. Two electricians. The mike boy. The continuity girl. And finally, me. Almost like a factory outing, only instead of ‘the chara’, a lifeboat.

It all went quite well; that is, it was about 10.30 before we were ready to leave the jetty and then, of course, we had the delicate business of transferring towing cable, mike cable and camera cable from the Tyella. This went well, too. It was now 10.50 by the time we were being towed towards the harbour mouth. Then and only then would we have a chance of going for our first shot. I had explained to Jim why we had not taken off the platform. We had to have the camera mounted on it so that I could get an establishing shot of the full complement of men in the boat. The only way to get it was to have the camera in almost the same place as it had been for our first canter down the course when we were pooped. If pooped once, why not twice? A very fair question and we hoped that we had found a very fair answer.