The last of the independent features made in the prime of Buster Keaton's career, STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. is a large-scale follow-up to *The General*, substituting a Mississippi paddlewheel for the locomotive, and replacing the spectacle of the Civil War with a catastrophic hurricane. Keaton stars as William Canfield, Jr., a Boston collegian who returns to his deep-southern roots to reunite with his father, a crusty riverboat captain (Ernest Torrence) who is engaged in a bitter rivalry with a riverboat king, coincidentally, the father of Willie's sweetheart (Marion Byron).