As someone who watches a lot of travel-inspiring films, I love watching movies set in far-flung destinations. But as the saying goes, “It’s about the journey, not the destination” so I’m focusing on a mode of travel in this post. Everyone else might focus on planes, trains, and automobiles but I’ve created a list of the top boat movies instead!

Boating movies, ship movies, sailing movies… They all sound similar but there are so many different types of boat movies!

Many are ship disaster movies with sea creatures, storms, and iceberg crashes. Some of the best boat movies are about the stormy seas within. Others are plain old swash-buckling adventure movies, and we love those too.

There are honestly too many movies with boats to mention, but I’ve done my best. I feel like that “Boats! Boats! Boats!” character on season six of How I Met Your Mother, I’ve written the word so many damn times.

Without further delay, here is my boat and ship movies list complete with boat movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and more.

List of Top Boat Movies

1. Lifeboat (1944)

English | 97m | 90% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on a novella written by John Steinbeck, Lifeboat was always going to be a brilliant boat movie.

It’s a story set during World War II about British and American citizens fleeing to lifeboats after their U-boats sink a passenger vessel. Because it was sympathetic to German soldiers and released while the war was still ongoing, many viewers didn’t rate this claustrophobic drama too highly!

Luckily, with the passage of time, the film holds up as one of the great boat films of all time.

2. The African Queen (1951)

English, German, Swahili | 105m | 96% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

Winning four Academy Awards including Best Actress for Katherine Hepburn, The African Queen is one of the best movies about sailing. Many think it’s a true story, but it’s a fictional tale set at the start of World War I with Hepburn playing a British missionary in German East Africa.

After the war breaks out, she is forced to flee on a little postal boat named African Queen with boat captain Humphrey Bogart. It’s one of the top classic movies about boats that stands the test of time.

Although set in the former German East African territories (Burundi, Rwanda, the Kionga Triangle, and parts of Tanzania and Mozambique), it was filmed in entirely different places.

Studio filming was carried out in Shepperton Studios in the UK. On-location filming was in places like the Ruiki River and Ponthierville Falls in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Other scenes were shot in Lake Albert, Port Butiaba, and other beautiful destinations in Uganda.

3. Moby Dick (1956)

English | 116m | 84% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

Love to watch movies about boats sinking and movies about sailing ships? You’re in luck, Moby Dick is both!

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is an American classic (one I still need to read). It’s a tale told from the point of view of a sailor called Ishmael. He’s sailing on a Nantucket whaling ship called Pequod run by Captain Ahab. The captain has an obsession with killing a white whale called Moby Dick, even if it puts his crew in danger.

Moby Dick is directed by John Huston and stars Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab and Orson Welles as Father Mapple. There have been several other TV and film adaptations of the 1851 novel, but out of all of these movies about ships at sea, this version is still the best.

4. Jaws (1975)

English | 124m | 97% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

Like Jaws wasn’t going to be on the list, right? Sure, it would be more at home on a list of thrillers or monster movies than a list of boating movies, but it definitely falls under the nautical movies banner. And the, “we’re going to need a bigger boat” line is iconic.

Jaws is Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster mega-hit about a great white shark that is terrorising the fictional New England beach town of Amity Island. It was mostly shot at Martha’s Vineyard. Three men (played by Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw) hunt down the shark on a boat called Orca.

It was just big enough to accomplish the task of taking down the great white (spoilers, I guess?) but not so big for everyone to survive.

5. Dead Calm (1989)

English | 95m | 83% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

Dead Calm is an Australian psychological thriller starring Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman as a couple grieving the loss of their young son. While sailing through the Great Barrier Reef, they pick up a sailor (Billy Zane) who claims he is the sole survivor of a sinking sailboat.

They sail a 23-meter Bermudian ketch although I’m not sure of its name. But Dead Calm is one of the best boat trip movies with sailboats if you’re in the mood for a thriller. Plus, it’s not the only boats movie on this list with Billy Zane playing a bad guy!

6. The Hunt for Red October (1990)

English, Russian | 135m | 88% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

I don’t know if I would’ve put The Hunt for Red October on a list about ships in movies considering it’s about submarines, but it’s just too popular to leave out. Specifically, it’s about an undetectable typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine with a caterpillar drive.

The Hunt for Red October is based on the Tom Clancy novel set during the Cold War. It stars Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, a CIA agent who suspects the captain of the Red October sub, Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) of being a Russian defector. 

He must find the captain and confirm his suspicions before Ramius’s submarine is targeted by either the Americans or Russians.

Many movies about ships are naturally full of suspense and The Hunt for Red October is no different. Hopefully, this is one of the better ship movies so you’ll forgive the fact that it’s a submarine! Unless submarines are ships?! Honestly, I’m not the person to ask.

7. Captain Ron (1992)

English | 100m | 26% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

Here’s one of the few films about ships on this list that is a comedy! Kurt Russel stars as the titular character in Captain Ron. Martin Short’s character inherits a Formosa 51 sailing boat docked in the Caribbean and he enlists Captain Ron to sail the vessel to Miami for him.

The only trouble is that Captain Ron is what I would call a ‘bit of a character’ and not everything is plain sailing when he’s at the steering wheel.

Is this one of the best sailing ship movies of all time? Probably not, but if you’re in the mood to watch lighthearted, travel-inspiring movies on boats then you could do worse.

8. Forrest Gump (1994)

English | 142m | 71% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

Okay, so Forrest Gump is a film set on a boat entirely, but in my opinion, it does have one of the most famous boats in movies! Forrest’s Beaufort shrimp boat called Jenny is an icon. And, of course, all of the other Jennys that Forrest adds to his fleet of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. boats.

Forrest is a hapless, affable human who just happens to live an extraordinary life. He becomes a shrimping boat captain after promising his army friend Bubba (who dies while fighting in the Vietnam War) that they would start the company together.

After a rocky start, a storm grounds all of the other shrimping boats in the area allowing the Jenny to thrive.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve watched Forrest Gump. 10 times? Maybe more? It’s not perfect, but I watch it whenever I want to travel around the US or just be inspired by a beautiful story.

9. Titanic (1997)

English | 195m | 88% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

Yes, you knew Titanic would be on this list of movies with ships somewhere! James Cameron directed not only one of the most successful films at the box office (as only James Cameron can) but one of the best Hollywood ship movies ever.

Titanic uses the real-life disaster of the RMS Titanic, a White Star Line passenger liner and now one of the most famous movie ships. It hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic Ocean while sailing from Southampton to New York City. The movie follows a wealthy Rose (Kate Winslet) and the lower-class Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) as they find love against the odds.

It really is one of the best ship-sinking movies for many reasons. One is that in the extended cut, the Titanic takes just as long to sink in the film as it did in real life.

10. The Perfect Storm (2000)

English | 130m | 46% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Amazon Prime

One, while it’s not one of the best films with boats, The Perfect Storm is a true story. And despite getting mixed reviews, it was a commercial success at least.

It tells the tale of ‘Andrea Gail’, a commercial swordfishing boat that got caught up in one of the worst storms in modern history back in 1991. Three fierce weather fronts collided creating, some might say, the perfect storm.

George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and John C. Reilly lead an all-star cast of fishermen caught up in this monumental storm somewhere between Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the Flemish Cap. Slight spoilers, but The Perfect Storm comfortably falls within the ‘boat sinking movies’ category.

I hope you aren’t an optimist and you hoped that a small fishing boat would be able to survive one of the worst storms ever, right?

11. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

English | 143m | 80% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Disney+

Based on a ride at some of the Walt Disney theme parks, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl is the first in a successful (yet mixed) fantasy franchise. Thinking about the movie, it has a much more complicated plot to explain than I first expected!

Basically, Curse of the Black Pearl stars Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, a pirate captain without a ship who arrives in Port Royal in the Caribbean. Orlando Bloom as blacksmith Will Turner and Keira Knightley as the governor’s daughter Elizabeth Swan also star.

The Black Pearl is a ship manned by undead pirates who are in need of Will’s blood, and a coin in Elizabeth’s possession to break their curse.

It’s a family-friendly, fun adventure movie and by far the best of the series. And who doesn’t love a pirate film?! 

12. True Spirit (2023)

English | 109m | 79% Rotten Tomatoes | Watch on Netflix

You don’t have to resort to watching amateur sailing videos on YouTube to satiate your desire to watch free boat movies. If you have a Netflix subscription,  True Spirit is one of the best boating movies on Netflix!

Based on a memoir of the same name, True Spirit is about a 16-year-old Australian sailor. She wants to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone. Naturally, she must deal with tons of challenges and face her greatest faces (one of them being a horrendous death, I assume).

Although there aren’t many sailing movies Netflix has made as an original production, this one is a really great one. She sails a S&S 34 Ella’s Pink Lady and goes through some unbelievably scary moments.

Other Top Boat Movies on Ships: Overboard (1987), Hook (1991), The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004), The Boat That Rocked/Pirate Radio (2009), Life of Pi (2012), All Is Lost (2013), The Mercy (2017), Dunkirk (2017), Adrift (2018)

Top Boat Movies: That’s a Wrap!

Those are some of my favourite boat movies and ship Movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other platforms.

Have you watched any of these films or have any more recommendations? Let me know in the comments below!

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