 This ship in the movie was actually the SS Buford named after  prominent Union Civil War cavalry general and hero of Gettysburg  John T. Buford. It was an army troop transport in WW I then became a  civilian passenger ship. . Her most famous passenger was Emma  Goldman, the fiery anarchist, when the ship was used to deport 248  political radicals to the Soviet Union in 1923 during the "Red  Scare" period.