Cappy Ricks, the owner of the Ricks Navigation Company, returns home unexpectedly after a long holiday and is dismayed to find that his house has been filled with new-fangled gadgets by Mrs. Amanda Peasely, the wife of his dead partner. He also learns that his daughter Ellen plans to divorce her meek husband Matt, who is Amanda’s son, and that his other daughter Francis, who is called “Frankie,” has broken her engagement to Cappy’s friend Bill Peck. Frankie is now engaged to Waldo, the son of Cappy’s arch-rival, Waldo P. Bottomly, Sr. Waldo and Bottomly come to dinner that night, and Cappy is further infuriated to learn that Mrs. Peasely and Bottomly now control fifty-one percent of his business. Cappy believes that the family’s shenanigans result from their being “gadget crazy,” and so, in order to cure them, he invites his daughters, Matt and Amanda on a weekend cruise aboard his yacht. Bill is in on the scheme, but it goes awry when the family discovers that Cappy intends to keep them aboard for eight weeks. They refuse to help with the chores, and as their moods worsen, Cappy takes drastic action. He, Bill, the captain and the steward fake a fire aboard the ship, and the family escapes to an uninhabited island. The captain and the steward remain on the ship, which they intend to sail back to San Francisco before sending another ship to rescue Cappy. The marooned group settle somewhat quarrelsomely onto their island, and while Matt builds a hut in the hope of winning back Ellen, Frankie proposes to Bill out of despair that she will ever get married. Cappy, who is a licensed sea captain, takes Frankie and Bill aboard the lifeboat for the marriage ceremony, but there Frankie finds the radio with which Cappy has been contacting the captain, and tells the others. They are all furious with Cappy and Bill, until one night, they hear a radio report that Cappy’s yacht has been lost at sea with everyone aboard presumed missing. Realizing that the captain cannot send a rescue ship, they despair, until one day, they are found by the Bottomlys. Waldo tells them that they were sent by Cappy’s crew, who were rescued after all. While the others are happily ensconced in the fully automated yacht, Cappy and Bill are forced to do chores as penance. Waldo insists on marrying Frankie without delay, and she reluctantly agrees. Just before the ceremony begins, however, a huge storm starts, and Cappy and Bill hit on a plan to solve their troubles. They remove the fuse from the one switch that operates the entire yacht, and the automation becomes useless. As the storm grows, the ceremony is cancelled and Bottomly begs Cappy and Bill, the only real sailors aboard, for their help. Bill sets the condition that Frankie must marry him, to which she happily agrees, while Cappy demands that Bottomly and Amanda sell back their stock in his company and that Amanda move out of his house. Their conditions met, Cappy and Bill save the ship and soon after, on a beautiful day, Cappy marries Bill and Frankie. More on Wikipedia or Mubi
Watch Affairs of Cappy Ricks (1937)
