266 SAND PEBBLES, THE
1903 to 1928. Built in Hong Kong by Vaughn & Yung Engineering Ltd. at a cost of
$250,000, the San Pablo was powered by reliable Cummins diesel engines, not a
period steam engine liable to break down and cause production delays. The San
Pablo emitted black smoke from her smokestack that came from old tires and other
rubbish burned in a special compartment on the boat. Jake Holman’s beloved
engine— a working 20- ton, 1,000- horsepower, triple expansion steam engine built
by Vickers in 1920 and sal vaged from a Norwegian whaler in Vancouver, British
Columbia— was actually located in an engine room set built on Stage 16 at
20th Century Fox studios in Burbank, not on the San Pablo.Production
Shooting in mainland China, where the novel was set, was out of the question, so
much of The Sand Pebbles was filmed on the Keelung and Tam Sui Rivers at Taipei,
on the island of Taiwan. The narrow, crowded streets of Taipei were used for street
scenes supposedly taking place in Shanghai, San Pablo’s home port. In the Tamsui
district of Taipei, 900 of the 5,000 locals were recruited as extras to storm across
the “Changsha Bund” and hurl lighted torches at the San Pablo. Po- Han’s poignant
death scene was also filmed in Tamsui. Filming on Taiwan lasted four and a half
months (22 November 1965–21 March 1966). The com pany then moved on to
Hong Kong to film the movie’s climactic fight between the San Pablo and 30 Chi-
nese junks blockading it, supposedly on the Chien River in mainland China, but
it was actually shot on a narrow inlet in Hong Kong’s Sai Kung district— the mas-
sive 1,000- foot bamboo rope that linked the junks together weighed 25 tons. Film-
ing of the battle scene, which took two months, was completed 15 May 1966. The
135- person cast and crew then returned to California to shoot interior scenes at
the studio in Burbank and some additional exteriors at Malibu Creek State Park in
Calabasas in June and July. The grueling nine- month shoot was fi nally concluded
on 2 August 1966 at the USS Te x a s, near Houston, where what was supposed to
have been the film’s opening scene was shot (i.e., Jake’s departure from an Ameri-
can battleship in Shanghai harbor). Included in a test rough cut, that scene and
some other scenes ended up on the cutting room floor in order to trim the film’s
running time from 196 minutes down to 182 minutes. Due to production delays,
mostly caused by inclement weather but also due to the language barrier in Tai-
wan, unpredictable tides, etc., the film greatly exceeded its $8 million bud get,
coming in at $12 million. Steve McQueen was so exhausted that he took a year off
to rest.Plot Summary
In 1926, Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Jake Holman (Steve McQueen) transfers to the
Yangtze River Patrol gunboat USS San Pablo (nicknamed the “Sand Pebble” and its
sailors are dubbed “Sand Pebbles”). The officers have hired coolies to do most of
the routine work, leaving the sailors free for military drills or just lounging about.
An industrious individualist and avid mechanic, Holman takes over the operation
and maintenance of the ship’s engine— inadvertently insulting the chief engine
room coolie, Chien (Tommy Lee) in the pro cess. Holman also alienates most of