Even if it is blantant advertisement for your Spontoon website... : )

Just think of it as Propaganda!

Gee. I don't know how it happened but the message I wrote previous to that didn't get posted, making the follow-up completely senseless.

I think my first message went pretty much like this --

"Nice to see anything new by you, especially something elaborate."

Thank you! I'll look forward to inking a whole lot more...

Looks like an excerpt from one of the Songmark Diaries...

Okay, Maybe the freighter collided with a small Pleasure boat and kept on going? It would account for the rather irate look on some of the Rescuer's faces.

I kept looking at the image and imagining possibilities. If I had shown more black smoke, it could be a major fire on the ship. A fire at specific locations could have a ship steaming ahead, with no way to stop engines, and with some people forced into the sea.

Like The Morro Castle? She was a "Party Ship" that caught fire off the East coast of New Jersey in the late 1930's I think, and burned for several days. Her smoking hull came to rest on the Jersey shore where eventually she was cut up and dragged off as scrap.

Yeah. That's the major meme I was thinking of in mentioning that scenario. I even think there were a couple of early 30s B-movies featuring that sort of disaster as a centerpiece.

Steamfox, with the picture as a snapshot, your scenario of a freighter running over a small boat is the most likely scenario -- that often happened, especially at night. You would like to think of a ship's bridge as being alert and responsive, but sometimes it just didn't happen.

That's the first scenario that came to my mind.

I was influenced by some of the more "atmospheric" stories in the Spontoon setting featuring mysterious freighter ships. Some of those stories didn't seem to have a patrol boat nearby....

I haven't read everything you have posted here yet, but have you read William Shirer's "The Nightmare Years", which is his recollections of 1930-1940?

Another skreamin' good one is anything by Frederick Lewis Allen--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Lewis_Allen

Cheers, eh?

SDE

Thank you. I've read some of Shirer, years ago, but not that one, as I recall. I'll also check out Allen.

The Spontoon Island setting is a framework for a 'pulp fiction' universe. From your drawings, you already seem to have an affinity for that retro-vehicle style, and certainly enjoy doing pulp-dramatic illustrations. (That's a complement!)

That "Spontoon" website is always available as an archive for specific or generic 30s-flavor art, if you are so inclined. (Or if you have a secret cache of funny animal hula-dancer illustrations.)