December 7 - Reap The Wild Wind Author Moves Near the Southernmost Point - a podcast by 43 Keys Media

As the film opens, Loxie Claiborne is running a marine salvage business started by her deceased father. A hurricane is passing through the Key West area leaving behind at least one wreck on the nearby shoals. The Jubilee founders and Loxie and other salvagers race to claim the cargo. Not arriving first, Loxie and her crew rescue the Captain jack Stewart, but do not share in the salvage rights. Apparently the first salver on the scene, King Cutler may have actually planned the wreck. Nursing Jack back to health, Loxie falls in love with him.

When she visits Charleston with her cousin Priscilla, Loxie schemes to win a plum captain's position for Jack by seducing Steve Tolliver, who's running the sailing ship line for which Jack works. Steve falls for Loxie and returns with her to Key West to investigate the truth about Jack's shipwreck.

Drusilla goes home to Havana when Loxie and Steve returned to Key West. Steve has come to rid the Keys of pirates like Cutler and to be near Loxie. Cutler, in turn arranges to have Steve Shanghai'd by the crew of a whaler. Loxie hears the plot and gets Jack to help her save Steve. Later they discover that Steve concealed Jack's appointment to the steamship Southern Cross on orders from his superior.

Angry over a seemingly underhanded act. Jack meets with Cutler and he learns that Steve's boss had just died and that Steve will be taking over the shipping line. Jack realizes that he's unlikely to keep his command with Steph in charge and agrees to work with Cutler to sabotage his new ship. He sails to Havana to take command.

Rumors circulate and prices of the cargo of the Southern Cross fluctuate wildly, leaving Steve to suspecta wreck is planned. He commandeers the Claiborn with Lokie on board and sails to Havana to stop Jack.

Loxie, believing jack is innocent disables her ship and they sit becalmed in a fog bank as the Southern Cross piles into the reef and sinks. Unknown to Jack, Drusilla had stowed away to be with her lover, King Cutler's brother Dan and she drowned.

Jack is put on trial for wrecking his ship. The testimony reveals a woman may have been on board but none was rescued. To determine if a woman was in the wreck, Steve agrees to dive to the wreck with Jack. While down in the wreck, Jack and Steve discover proof that Drusilla was on board and had been drowned.

They are attacked by a giant squid. Jack saves Steve's life but was lost when the Southern Cross slips off the continental shelf into the deep water. Dan Cutler accuses his brother of murder and is shot dead by him. Whereupon, Steve shoots King Cutler killing him. Loxie and Steve return to Charleston together.

Reap The Wild Wind is a 1942 adventure film starring Ray Milland and John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, Robert Preston and Susan Hayward and directed by Cecil B. de Mille. His second picture to be filmed in color. It's based on a serialized story written by Thelma Strabel in 1944, for the Saturday Evening Post.

The movie released shortly after the United States entry into World War II and was a swashbuckling adventure set in the 1840s along the Florida coast and was wildly successful. While he based his film on Strabel's story, de Mille took liberties with the details such as the sibling relationships and subplots, while staying true to the spirit of the story, which centers on a head strong, independent woman, portrayed by Paulette Goddard

And it was today December 7, 1940, that author Thelma Strabell moved into hrr new house by the Southernmost Point. She's best remembered for her novel, Reap the Wild Wind, the story about the Key West wreckers that was made into a movie.

And that's what happened Today in Key West history.

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