Lt Hornblower BLOWS MY HORN

Should I read the Hornblower books? I loved the entire Patrick O'Brien Aubrey/Maturin series & "Master & Commander: Far Side Of the World" movie.

I want to go to Portsmouth to see the big ships!

x-post, it's fantastic, Marianna. Cannot wait for ep 3.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/totheendsoftheearth/images/450x187/characters_actors.jpg

I was half asleep through the first episode and missed much of the finer plot points that weren't to do with sodomy and religious mania.

Why does Deverell hate Anderson so much? Did not catch that. Suddenly Deverell was offering Anderson out for a duel in Ep 2 and I didn't know why.

...I don't know the Hornblower books aside from the back that my friend Fr3ya was obsessed with them in High School.

(I think it was her, at least)

I guess that means I'm going to have to buy the DVD and watch it again. Sigh.

How weird -- I watched it this morning!

The book is fantastic, so much more layered and dense. And all things are explained... why Deverell and Anderson hate each other so much (D knows the Captain's DARK HORRIBLE SECRET) and much more, oh my...

And will I ever find out what a "Badger Bag" is?

The descriptions of the Captain are fantastic in the book. He never speaks, he only roars and growls and occasionally hisses. (Except for he is around his plants, then he speaks in a "holiday voice".) There are several passages where he is described as thrusting out his lower jaw in order to sink the sullen mass of his face down upon it, glowering through his eyebrows... aaaaahhhhh!!!

Though the passage about the change in Captain Anderson when he is in his garden is just too lovely for words.

I've been using my lunch hour to google British Naval Rank (What is the difference between a Captain and a Post Captain? Ah, a Post Captain is an actual naval rank, while Captain is just the title of the person who runs the ship) and nautical terminology (what is the difference between a Quarterdeck and a Poop Deck?) ... and so far the best resource I've found is... a Writers' Resource page for authors of ... Pirates of the Carribean fanfict.

Do I dare? Do I truly dare? I'm not sure I do. Oh my.

Now I need to look up semaphores.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am definitely going to have to get a copy of TTEOTE (the book).

I used my lunch hour today to read more of Cloud Atlas, which is definitely the fault of last week's discussion in the pub.

Emsk says she will bring Cloud Atlas round tonight. But only if I return Ghostwritten (which I shouldn't because she had my copy of Number Nine Dream for THREE YEARS!!!)

I am just about BURSTING with the significance of Captain Anderson's deep, dark secret. Though I cannot tell anyone who is not actually going to read the book as it is a total spoiler. However, unlike most Deep Dark Secrets, this one is actually Not His Fault so it makes him a far more sympathetic character than his behaviour would indicate him.

(however, one of these is Neal Stephenson's The System Of The World, which is far too big to carry to and from the office all the time)

(arse, I seem to be derailing threads again. Insert more about 19th-century navies here. All that flogging: hott in a kinky way, or just a bit too painful for that?)

(But then again, see all those old threads about turning schoolboys my ex over my knee and spanking him with a cane, so what would I know?)

Coincidentally, I have just had a debate with a co-worker about the difference between "perverted" and "kinky".

ANYWAY! Discussion of Captain Anderson, please, not my sex life.

Which one is Captain Anderson, though?

(so there)

Sir Edward Heath RIP (85 new answers, 86 total)

http://www.navydaze.com/Around%20the%20Horn.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/totheendsoftheearth/images/450x187/competition.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/totheendsoftheearth/images/450x187/episode2.jpg

Oh no, alas, it is just a spyglass.

xpost

"There is a pathos and vulnerability in Walsh's characters lacking in the more self-contained Ford and Hawks counterparts. Where Ford shifts from the immediacy of the slightly depressed heroic angle to the horizon line of history, and Hawks remains at eye level, Walsh often moves to the slightly elevated angle of the lost child in the big world. One of the most stunning shots of this nature occurs in Captain Horatio Hornblower when Walsh's camera recedes and rises slowly to present the lonely image of Gregory Peck, ridiculously gallant in his period costume and yet foreshortened into the lost son of his mother."
--Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema

(See also White Heat.)

Walking through Tottenham Ct. Rd. station the other day I noticed a poster for a new seafaring style book. I can't remember the name of it, anyone? I read "Star Of The Sea" last year - it was pretty good for what it was, a seafaring mystery.

I stopped reading at the end of Book 2 because I did not want to spoil tonight. I am almost as jealous as Summers because Captain Anderson is so deep in smit with Benet. Sigh.

Sorry, Marianna, but Captain Anderson's Deep Dark Secret is not revealed until the very end, almost as a post-script. I am glad that it happens that way, because it casts the entire story in a completely different light, when you realise he is not actually the villain of the piece that he appears to both Talbot and reader.

(Unless I should start with the first one, natch.)

I suspect, given my compulsive nature, that I should probably stay away.

(Unless there is someone I could crush on as much as Captain Anderson.)

Right now, I'm trying to figure out how old Captain Anderson is, as I suspect the film version is much younger than the book version.

The only clues are as such... the journey takes place the year the Napoleon is sent to Elba, which makes it 1814. Anderson has travelled with Sir Joseph Banks - I'm assuming on the famous Botanical specimen gathering trip with Captain Cook in 1768.

There are 46 years between the two events... Blimey, I'm trying to find out what the enlistment age was during the Regency period - there are certainly boys of 15 or so on Anderson's ship.

That would make him nearly 60! Ah well, I suppose it's entirely possible that Anderson met Banks during the latter's civilian life, given the Captain's interest in horticulture.

Dark, in terms of character, natch. Captain Anderson is blond and ginger-whiskered as you can see above. (Though actually, in the book it does not describe his hair colour, either! Only that he has massive eyebrows. Maybe he has massive blond Viking eyebrows.)

Could easily have been 11 or 12. Also, Banks made more than one major voyage, including one to Norway in 1772. So it could be that one. Does that shave a few years off?

Oh the hottness of his hair sparkling in the sunlight...

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,210498,00.jpg

Carver is impressed at the way that the BBC has used the microcosmic, claustrophobic world of the ship to explore Golding's recurrent themes of obsession, love, guilt and brutality. "I really feel it gets inside what my father was concerned about. My dad was concerned that Capt Anderson [played by Jared Harris] shouldn't be a cardboard cut-out. He may be harsh, but he is a good captain and the survival of the boat is his first duty. In the drama, we see him not just as an incredibly bad-tempered, vindictive person with a chip on his shoulder but as a companionable man, a person of reasonable bonhomie. My dad admired the Navy because it worked, and to work you can see that it needs people like Anderson."

Awww, he's talking all about how he (Harris) proposed to his fiance. So sweet!

I was rewarded last night with the sight of the good Captain Anderson, raised from his slumber by an iceburg, STOMPING ABOUT THE QUARTERDECK IN HIS UNMENTIONABLES.

I am simply overcome with lust.

(with Richard Harris, not Andy Warhol)

Anyway! What did we think of that episode? Horrible, horrible Benet.

But ah, the Captain had the best comedy moment in the whole series, untintentionally reading the Funeral service instead of the wedding.

It was ironic that Anderson was so taken with Benet, as he was always coming up with new ways (usually involving infernal steam and things) to put the ship at risk. Benet is much worse in the book, with his composing poetry and being unbelievably irritating. Ah well, at least he wasn't as bad as Deverell.

"Captain Anderson is a crusty old seadog. He's not particularly imaginative; he's an isolated loner who isn't good with people - socially inarticulate. There is an interesting ambiguity in all the characters. As it's a first person narrative, the characters aren't necessarily as Edmund sees them.

"Personally, I'm not at all like Anderson, and in fact the only thing I ever captained in my life was my football team, and that was on my birthday!"

Anyway, who cares about mere actors? I am in love with a Post Captain!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/totheendsoftheearth/images/450x187/episode1.jpg

This is official uniform of the time:

http://www.militaryheritage.com/images/rn_capt1_small.jpg

Captains who had been in service for over 3 years had white lapels:

http://www.kipar.org/piratical-resources/uniforms/captain3.jpg

While captains who had beenin service for less than 3 years had blue lapels:

http://www.kipar.org/piratical-resources/uniforms/captain4.jpg

Captain Anderson's lapels are blue, ergo he hath been a captain 3 years or under:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/totheendsoftheearth/images/photogallery/340x255/anderson.jpg

(Yes, I am so pathetic. I know it. But still, it amuses me and I am bored and stressed.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/totheendsoftheearth/images/450x187/characters_actors.jpg

Summers' awareness of his own position would make him more likely to run out and get the right uniform immediately.

(Actually, it said in the book that my husband's uniform was slightly shabby, so I would accept it of him. But Sir Henry? No!)

Often Captain Jack would make a mess of his best uniform (by diving into the ocean in it, or splitting it in some action), forcing Killick to send him out in his second best jacket, which caused him much distress. Poor Killick.

http://fotomuveszet.elender.hu/0134/nagykepek/jpg_kepek_013407/01340705.jpg

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0140288961.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The Command Of The Sea by N.A.M. Rodger - a fine and worthy history of British sea power. (Though not of British Sea Power, nasty leg-breaking brigands that they are.)

Also, they are having a competition to win a place in the Lord Nelson!!! (I would be a rubbish sailor I'm sure, but still.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/content/articles/2005/07/14/lord_nelson_feature.shtml

D'oh.

(Would it be really awful to try and convince them that Manic Depression is considered a disability, and since in my mania I sometimes believe myself to be a pirate, it would be very therapeudic?)

Why is it that Jared Harris in character = THE HOTTEST THING ON EARTH!!! and Jared Harris as himself in the cast interviews is kind of a weird-looking precious thespian? Damn, actors. I guess that means he's good at the ACT-ing bit.

The first ep was better than I remembered it - especially the Colley "you have made a beast of yourself!" stuff but was actually astonished how much of the book they left out (crucially CAPTAIN ANDERSON'S DEEP DARK SECRET) but still the plot held up.

Mmmmmm, if anyone wants me for the rest of the weekend, I'm unavailable.