The pilot for the television series McHale's Navy was a one-hour dramatic episode titled "Seven Against the Sea" which aired on April 3, 1962, on ABC. Starring Ernest Borgnine as Quinton McHale, it featured a more serious tone than the later sitcom, focusing on a PT boat crew in the South Pacific during WWII.

Academy Award–winning dramatic actor Ernest Borgnine first appeared as Quinton McHale in an hour-long PT boat drama called "Seven Against the Sea",[1] which aired as an episode of Alcoa Premiere in 1962, an ABC dramatic anthology also known as Fred Astaire's Premiere Theatre and hosted by Fred Astaire, who introduced television audiences to the Quinton McHale character.[2] It is considered the pilot show for the series[3] although it is an hour-long drama instead of a half-hour situation comedy and is starkly different in tone.