Venture

Venture Length 174 feetKK05 Targets None Piloted by Captain Englehorn

The S.S. Venture is a fictional tramp steamer that appears in the 1933 film King Kong, its 1933 sequel Son of Kong, and its 2005 remake. In the 1932 King Kong novelization, it is called the S.S. Wanderer.

History

King Kong (1933)

The Venture in King Kong (1933)

After assembling a film crew, Carl Denham hired Captain Englehorn and his ship the Venture to sail to the uncharted Skull Island to film his newest picture. During the voyage, Denham's leading lady Ann Darrow began to form a romantic relationship with the Venture's first mate, Jack Driscoll. When the Venture reached Skull Island, it anchored near the shore while the crew went onto the island to explore. After the crew encountered the local natives and learned they wanted to sacrifice Ann to their god, Kong, they returned to the Venture. That night, a group of natives used canoes to approach the ship and captured Ann while she was on deck, then brought her back to the island to sacrifice her to Kong. When the crew found a bracelet left behind by the natives, they pursued them back onto the island. Eventually, after Jack rescued Ann from Kong and lured the beast back to the village, Denham and his crew used gas bombs to knock Kong unconscious. They then used the Venture to transport Kong back to New York, where he intended to display him on Broadway.

Son of Kong

Overwhelmed by lawsuits due to the destruction wrought by King Kong in New York, Carl Denham approached Captain Englehorn, who anticipated to receive similar lawsuits himself. Together, the two of them left New York on board the Venture once again and attempted to make money shipping cargo around the Pacific Ocean. After stopping at the Dutch port of Dakang, they met Nils Helstrom, a Norwegian captain who had sold Denham the map to Skull Island. Helstrom informed Denham of a hidden treasure on the island, and Denham, blinded by his financial situation, decided to return to the island and search for the treasure. Denham and Englehorn left for Skull Island on board the Venture, along with Hilda Petersen, a stowaway who worked in a sideshow in Dakang. On the way, a mutiny was staged on the Venture and Denham, Hilda, the cook Charlie and Englehorn were all set adrift.

Trivia

• The ship that fills the role of the Venture in the 1976 remake of King Kong is called the Petrox Explorer.
• Ships named Venture appear in the 1997 film The Lost World: Jurassic Park and the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In the former, the Venture transports a Tyrannosaurus to San Diego; in the latter, it is part of an underwater ship graveyard. A massive cage rests on its deck, the door torn open. King Kong himself appears earlier in Sky Captain in silhouette, climbing the Empire State Building.
• The Wanderer appears in Kong: Skull Island as a beached ship that was repurposed by the Iwi into a shrine for King Kong. Hank Marlow states that the Wanderer came to the island about a decade before his own arrival in 1944. The film's novelization makes the connection to the original story more explicit, with Bill Randa saying of Skull Island, "There's even talk of a movie crew disappearing out here in thirty-three."

References

This is a list of references for Venture. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: ^[1]