Grossly underrated splendid sea adventure of an early fur expedition from New York around the Horn to Oregon to do some risky trading with the Indians - all risks are taken, and paid for. But the direction and the acting is efficient to say the least, Franchot Tone is the only gentleman on board, having followed the expedition against his willl, while the rowdy John Carroll as the extremely irresponsible and sympathetically unscrupulous French Canadian is the most colorful part, always promising and doing the wrong thing, and that's how he got a female stowaway on board (Carol Bruce), beautiful and charming enough but all cheated and as unwilling to be part of the adventure as Franchot Tone. Walter Brennan is the major character as the captain, a hard one to deal with sticking ruthlessly to the formalism of discipline, while Leo G. Carroll and Nigel Bruce (both quite young here) add some comedy to ease up the ordeals. Frank Lloyd Wright made "Mutiny on the Bounty" six years earlier, and this is rather in the same vein but without any exaggerated evil - the Indians are as they were in the 1830s on the west coast wilderness, and the leaders of the expedition were well aware of that from the beginning. Eventually even captain Walter Brennan softens up enough to become almost human and saves the situation.
