Personally I'm more a fan of 'Hornblower', but M&C was a very good movie. Interesting that both in Hornblower and in the Aubrey/Maturin books (and movies) you encounter the same stories - for example the raft with the lantern they built that then drifted off, thus escaping a French ship of the line. o'Brian and Forrester definitely used the same captain's logs.

Nitpicking mode on:
Technically, a ship of the line was a ship much larger than a frigate (which is what the Surprise is escaping from in the film ). A ship of the line would typically carry from 74 guns and up, and be part of the line of battle, hence the name
Nitpicking mode off.

Got you there, you landlubber

Maybe he was interpreting the 44 gun french frigate/privateer as a cut down ship of the line or a razeed frigate, which is what the British thought the American "heavy frigates" really were--cut down ships of the line. So, he wasn't really that far off

This is part of the reason why I love SimHQ so much. Rivet-counting is alive and well.

Technically speaking it is cannon-counting

*looks at his 80cd box of Karajan recordings*

I bet I can find some Boccherini in that one

Another series worth reading is the Bolitho series by Alexander Kent, which is a pseudonym for Douglas Reeman. Reeman has written a ton of naval fiction set in WWI and WWII mainly under his own name as well. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 16 in 1940, and served in WWII and Korea, rising to Lieutenant.

Anyway, they escaped from this French boat...



Been a while since I saw the movie... I thought the story was that the Acheron was so much stronger it was a ship of the line.

Are there wooden ship models that depict this era BTW? Billing Boats, Artesania... stuff like that. Can't really remember... It can only remember older (galleons, viking ships) or newer (clippers) models.

The Surprise was an aging 28-gun frigate, the Acheron a new, 44-gun one. It was armed with 18-pounders IIRC, as opposed to the Surprise's 9-pounders, thus throwing considerably more metal with each broadside. The fact that frigates grew around the start of the 19th century and that the Surprise was somewhat aging ("would you call ME an aging man-of-war, doctor?" ), is often made a point of in the novels. Even Jack Aubrey doubts he could take on one of the new 38-gun American frigates in the Surprise, but mostly because she wasn't built to take the guns that would be required to attack one. Yet he still loves his ship, and indeed takes it yardarm to yardarm with a French 74 in the Indian Ocean in "HMS Surprise", the third novel, actually managing to inflict some damage, and getting away because of the superior sailing qualities of his ship.

That is one of the things I love so much about O'Brian's books; the descriptions of how Aubrey loves the Surprise, and is able to bring out the best of its sailing qualities, often outrunning much larger and more powerful ships.

They basically based Archeron on USS Constitution -- a 44 gun American built frigate (which the British thought were really cut down ships of line during the War of 1812--which they were not, but were in fact about as strong and powerful as a ship of line). In fact, they may have used Constitution for some of the long shots in the opening battle--or based the shots from film taken during her sailing restoration.

To model Archeron, use a kit of the Constitution. There are plenty of wooden sailing ship kits out there from companies like Mamoli, Billings Boats, Artesanian Latine, Model Shipways etc. And some good plastic kits too from Revell, Airfix and Heller. The old Lindberg "La Flora" kit, now often labelled as "The Jolly Roger" Pirate Ship, makes a decent substitute for Surprise.