And not only do you get exciting engagements like that, but some good history lessons as to what shipboard life was like as well as how those ships were handled. Eventually, you also learn to pick up what all those terms mean. There's also bits of trivia like why the dog watch is called the dog watch and other great puns.

I bought the first collector's DVD release of the movie which included all the deleted scenes plus a rather long documentary of how they made the movie. They used the "Rose" frigate as the HMS Surprise for the scenes at sea. They had to get special permission to film around the Galapagos Islands. The "Rose"-- a real reconstructed frigate, was also used in some of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.

However, they also built a full-scale replica of the lower 2/3rds of the ship mounted on hydraulics in a huge tank filled with water built very close to the ocean somewhere on the Baja peninsula. This was done so the real ocean could be seen in most of the shots. The replica was used for much of the filming since they could control filming angles better They also hired a bunch of sailing experts well versed in the historic period to extensively train all the actors on how to crew a period-correct English frigate.

The movie is sort of a combination of two of the Patrick O'Brien novels with one of the books "The far side of the World" being set during the war of 1812.
Consequently, in that book, the enemy frigate was not a French ship but was instead a USS Constitution-class frigate.

Of course, having the HMS Surprise defeating a US ship would not have gone over too well with American audiences, so for the movie, they switched the enemy to that of a Napoleonic French frigate.

Cheers

I believe I have the same one. Did yours come with a really nice fold out map of the South Atlantic?

Yes, that and a small booklet plus two separate DVDs all in a nicely decorated package with a sleeve for the whole set.

HMS Rose is a Seaford class post-ship (20 guns) and around 20ft shorter than L'Unite. She needed some modifications to make her quarterdeck more substantial for the quarterdeck ordnance to represent a light frigate for the filming.

It is a silliness for a 9lb frigate or post ship to attempt to take a 24lb frigate with a crew of around 450 men (roughly double the full crew of the smaller ship), even if fitted with carronades. (The spar deck of the 24lb frigates is far above the quarterdeck of a tiny 9lb corvette, so boarding is improbable, and very unlikely to succeed).

Much larger Pallas and Lively class frigates of 18lb were taken with ease by the US frigates - to the extent that an order was given that none of the RN frigates of 18lb should engage the US 24lb ships alone, requiring a minimum of two ships in the squadron, and the Endymion was only successful because she was fighting to 'kill' while President was fighting to cripple and flee... and then she temporarily struck until able to 'win' the race to repair made off before Endymion could send a prize crew across to take her. The Tenedos and Pomone ran her down and engaged from the opposite side (but did little new injury before she struck again). The major threat to her though was the much heavier (but no larger) Majestic frigate of 32lb (a Razee'd Canada class 74).

I think the original was supposed to represent something similar to the Essex (a 12lb frigate, historically raiding whalers), or maybe Chesapeake (18lb) (taken by Shannon, a Leda frigate of 18s), before first O'Brian and then the filmmakers amped up the situation to silly.

Yup, that's the one! Hard to believe I bought that from Amazon about 15 years ago.

Thanks for this excellent post! It was a great read.

When I state Essex was a 12lb frigate, she had been built for 12lb guns, then lost all but 6, receiving a large battery of 32lb carronades on upper deck and her fo'c'sle and qtr'deck (40 in total)), in which state she was taken.

Having been outmanoeuvred following a fore-topmast being carried away and then taken in a close range fight in which Phoebe and Cherub pounded her from positions on her quarters (from where they holed her with 18lb, 32lb carronades and 18 and 6lb guns), which could mostly only be replied to by the movable carriage guns, all transferred to ports existing and newly cut in her quarter as carronades pivots and slides attached to the hull were not portable and couldn't be brought to bear. Springs on her anchors were shot away preventing her keeping her broadside and the carronades in action).

There is a mythos around her that she was shot from *outside her range* by guns largely equal to and less than her own, when the statement given by Porter and by Hillyer was that she could only bring the chase guns to bear (which is a term used for angles, not for range).

The longest range stated is just over the line of metal range for both guns and carronades (which would be 700-750 yds for all of the weapons in use), and most of the engagement was at 'pistol shot' (400yds*) down to 250yds.


*This is the definition given by Adm Lord Rodney (his footnotes to "An Essay on Naval Tactics") when the author was discussing the relative failure of British fleets to come to decisive engagement because they approached in line from windward and were disabled by French gunfire between (or outside) the line of metal ranges to the pistol shot (400yds), at which point the disordered British column was disrupted by manoeuvring to avoid collisions, while the French wore away to repeat the process on the opposite tack from a longer range, repeated until the British fleet had to abandon their attempts.
This should be born in mind when looking at O'Brian/Aubrey declaring Carronades as 'only useful within pistol shot' and 'barely reaching a quarter mile (compared to their line of metal to 700 yds and throwing shot to 1200+ at 5 degrees with a carriage elevation of 11) - it is obvious he erroneously intends yard-arm to yard-arm, as do most other modern authors.

Correct. The novel The Far Side of the World is quite obviously a fictionalization of the Essex cruise. Why the movie specifically made the Acheron a 24lb Humphrey's frigate (which would have been improbably expensive for a privateer and, you are correct, should have been able to blow a 9lbs or even 12lbs frigate out of the water without working up a sweat) as opposed to a "normal" frigate (which would still have been big enough to outgun Surprise) I do not know, other than maybe the producers did not think movie goers would have been attune enough to the difference between a 9lbs and an 18lbs frigate.

Just watched M&CTFSOTW gain after probably a decade or more. I only have the original DVD. Excellent movie.

At the beginning of the movie, you see them ringing the watch bell(I'm not sure what its called) after the hour glass is turned and they ring it six times. Isn't the double rings of eight rings total a full watch of four hours? I think they rang the bell only six times and you see the crew shifting. So if only six bells were rung that would have been only a three hour watch because each single bell is a half hour? So was that only a three hour watch or were signifying what time it was somehow? And isn't a dog watch two hours? I'm trying to wrap my head around how they did that and what the six total double bell rings meant at the beginning.

I also forgot about the old timer getting his skull cored out and a coin being used to patch up the hole. Those were some tough bird sailors back when sailing ships on the open ocean and back when surgery was a less friendly activity. They're still around but there's just something about those tall ships and age of sail era vessels and folks who plied their trade at sea working them.

If they still sell it I'd love to get the copy Panzer is talking about. I loved the LOTR movies also. I liked the first POTC for what it was but like you all mentioned, they got ridiculous beyond that. Master and Commander is the kind of movie that deserves more entries.

Here is a trivia question since Coot mentioned LOTR.

Name the only actor who was in both Master & Commander and the LOTR movies.

Barret Bonden/Peregrine Took. Can't recall his name though.

Billy Boyd. But of course

He is the only one of the cast that didn’t quite fit his role, IMO. Even though Paul Bettany was different from how Maturin is described in the books, he did such a stellar job that he really became his character!

Yup. Both of you got it.

What did you think was missing from his performance or appearance?

I recently watched Moby Dick with William Hurt and Billy Boyd played a roll in that too. Its not an excellent movie but it has some great moments. I really liked William Hurt's portrayal of Captain Ahab. One of my favorite aspects of the movie was that they used the great song "Lowlands" as a them throughout the movie with a violin which was outstanding.

I'm not sure, but I think I went out on that boat for a mock battle a few years ago. I didn't get any good photos of it because I was on it, but I got photos of the ship we were "fighting"

Here is onboard:


And looking over the side:


Firing a cannon:


And our opponent:

For starters he was supposed to be a big, burly fellow. Mediterranean Fleet boxing champion. And I just don’t think he portrayed the typical British plucky lower rank all that well. The sort of «right, Sir, let’s get it done» type. I’m not saying he didn’t do a good job, because he did, but it’s probably more the fact that I had a different mental picture of him from reading the books.

Fair enough. I guess, unlike with Aubrey, etc., my mental picture of Bonden was not as firm. But I take your point.

And yet in Star Trek Nemesis where the director was an award winning editor, pretty much all of the deleted scenes not only make the film better when put back in, but some were essential and he completely screwed up the final cut.