After about two weeks of this shunting between the Federation, the Angel and various seamen's missions, we had collected, or rather made note of, about forty hopefuls who had expressed their interest in and agreement to undergoing a screen test. Forty hopefuls for a boatload of around 24 gave us a discard value of 16. I had great hopes that five of them might have something a little out of the ordinary; characters from whom I would get not just the odd remark and convincing reaction shots but sustained dialogue scenes in which they would be able ‘to throw the ball around’. My favourite was still Bob Banner, but I had high hopes for John Walden A.B. of 11 Arrowe Avenue, Moreton, Cheshire— a genuine London cockney, late twenties, with a face as finely chiselled as John Carradine's in Grapes of Wrath. A superbly sculptured face and most expressive eyes. And what, after all, has the screen actor to rely on, but eyes and voice? I did not require the great theatrical presences of the Irvings and the Forbes Robertsons. Great though they must have been, their battery of heavy guns were for other campaigns: wasted and out of place for so intimate a medium as a camera studying men's reactions to the rigours of days at sea in a lifeboat. The impression of such an ordeal could only be built up by a collected observation of minute detail in human behaviour. John Walden had a face that could register the agony of any given moment.

Alf Rawson A.B. of 105 Radnor Avenue, Welling, Kent—a good young type, alert, in his middle twenties, easy to talk to and of manner, an open face which inspired trust, and if he were to tell you that he had seen a periscope, instinctively you would believe him. He would be, for that reason, ideal to play the wounded man. But, he must be capable—and here was the rub—of conveying extreme sickness, mounting fever, babbling delirium one moment and coherence the next. Not exactly ‘a cake walk’ for someone with no acting experience. I explained to him, in detail, the part I had in mind for him to play, and its importance in the construction of the story.