The story begins in a seedy dock-side boarding house that caters to sailors, where Billy is a lodger far behind on paying his rent. The first major comic set-piece comes when Billy hides in his room from a seemingly crazy man who is flinging knives. As it turns out, the man is a performer who is practicing his knife-throwing act in the hallway --which doesn't make any sense, but never mind. Billy dodges the blades, his hat is split in two, there's a fight, and then the Italian man gets impaled in the butt by one of his own knives. We're treated to a gruesome shot of Billy pulling it out, slowly. The fight is interrupted when the landlady calls everyone to lunch, and the Italian promises he'll kill Billy after the meal, but we never see him again. It's that kind of movie. Because Billy can't pay his rent he's forced to move from his room to the grungy attic. That night there's a violent storm. Billy's sheets are blown off, then his bed is blown apart by the wind, so he sleeps in an improvised hammock.

Just when you're thinking this movie isn't going to have a plot, the plot proper gets underway when a burly sea captain shows up. He's played by a large actor named Stanton Heck in heavy makeup that was obviously intended to help him resemble Chaplin's frequent nemesis, Eric Campbell. The captain is a crook and a lech who soon forces himself upon the landlady's daughter, Miss Casey (played by Ethelyn Gibson who wears her hair like Edna Purviance). Billy comes to the girl's defense by donning drag and luring the captain away. This is a pretty funny sequence, due in part to the hilariously bizarre hat Billy wears as part of his disguise. The captain is briefly thwarted, but he later tricks Miss Casey into delivering a message to his boat which is manned by his henchmen, and she is captured and held prisoner.

As it turns out, the captain and his crew are involved in jewel thievery (his crew includes Leo White, who formerly worked with the real Chaplin, and our writer-director Charley Chase). Billy disguises himself as a cop, sneaks on board the boat, and then much frantic dashing about ensues. There's a nice little gag in this scene: in the middle of all the mayhem Billy calls a 'Time Out,' checks his watch, finds that it's still ticking, then permits the mayhem to resume. There's also an impressively staged shot when we see all the activity on-board from a distance, in a cut-away set representing the boat, as Billy and the crooks tumble and rush from one room to another. It's the highlight of the movie, but I must add that when Buster Keaton used a similar idea in his comedy THE HIGH SIGN produced a year or so after this he improved on it enormously.

"Ship Ahoy" (1919), movie