The underwater scenes of Buster Keaton trying to repair the ship in full diving gear were originally intended to be filmed in the local municipal swimming pool in Riverside, California. However, the pool was not deep enough, so higher retaining walls were built around the edges, to hold more water. Unfortunately, the weight of the additional water broke the bottom of the pool, and Keaton had to pay for the repair. The production was moved to Lake Tahoe, where the water was very clear, but so cold that Keaton could only stay under for ten minutes at a time. The camera crew was sent down in a watertight box, with ice packed around the camera to keep the lens from fogging over.
Technical director Fred Gabourie promised Buster after the difficulties filming the launch sequence in The Boat (1921), that he would someday find a boat suitable to be the main location in a two-reeler. He found Ocean Liner Buford while it was on loan to director Frank Lloyd who was filming The Sea Hawk (1924). The Buford proved so intriguing as a film prop that a story was written to make use of it.
An elaborate scene was cut from the underwater sequence because audiences didn't respond to it. Buster Keaton attached a starfish to his chest and proceeded to direct fish traffic, made up of several hundred rubber fish built by the prop department. Keaton loved the scene and regretted having to cut it, but did use it in the "'Coming Attractions" trailer.
The entire cast and crew lived on the "Navigator" ship for ten weeks during filming, which was mostly done near Avalon Bay, off Catalina Island.
The ship in the movie was actually the USAT Buford, named after prominent Union Civil War cavalry officer and hero of Gettysburg Gen. John T. Buford. The ship had begun life as the S.S. Mississippi for the Atlantic Transport Line in 1890. It was later purchased and renamed by the US government in 1898 and became an army troop transport in the Spanish American War and in WW I. Its most notorious incarnation was as the "Soviet Ark" (or "Red Ark") when the ship was used to deport 249 political radicals and other "undesirable" aliens, among them the fiery anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, to the Russian SFSR in December, 1919, during the Palmer Raids of the first "Red Scare" period in the US. At the time of this film the ship was owned by the Alaskan Siberian Navigation Co., based in San Francisco. After its use in this picture, records about the ship are scant, until the Los Angeles Times reported in 1929 that the ship was sold for scrapping in Japan.