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What changed in the film
What changed in the film, title by title: 46 in total. Tap a cover to open it. Titles you haven't marked as read stay locked so nothing gets spoiled.
- Referencenod to comics or other movies
- Cameoa familiar face shows up
- Setupplanted now, pays off later
- Behind the scenesproduction trivia
- ChangeThe lantern trick
The raft with a lit lantern that fools the Acheron at night comes from the first book, back when Jack commanded the little Sophie. The film moves the idea to the Surprise.
source ↗ - ChangeNo first meeting
The book opens with Jack and Stephen meeting at a concert in Port Mahon in 1800 and nearly fighting a duel over an elbow. In the film they are already old friends.
source ↗ - ChangeFrom Sophie to a frigate
In the book, Jack has just been promoted and gets his first command, the sloop Sophie, in the Mediterranean. The film puts him in charge of a frigate five years later.
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- ReferenceThe battle is real
The final fight is based on the Battle of Cape Santa Maria, on October 5, 1804, when four British frigates stopped a Spanish flotilla carrying gold.
source ↗ - ReferenceA nod to Jane Austen
Much of the book happens ashore, among balls and country houses. A 1998 New York Times piece noted it has been called O'Brian's homage to Jane Austen.
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- ChangeA different reason for the surgery
In both, Stephen digs the bullet out of himself with a mirror. In the book the bullet comes from a duel in Calcutta. In the film it comes from the Marine captain, who was aiming at an albatross.
source ↗ - ChangeA different ocean
The Surprise's first voyage under Jack heads east with an envoy aboard, by way of Bombay and Calcutta. The film sends the ship to Cape Horn and the Pacific.
source ↗ - ChangeNo Diana, no Sophie
In the book, Stephen proposes to Diana Villiers and Jack finds his fiancée, Sophia, again. The film leaves both out and stays almost entirely at sea.
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- ReferenceThe campaign happened
The action closely follows the real Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811, led by Commodore Josias Rowley. Réunion fell in July 1810 and Mauritius in December.
source ↗ - ReferenceClonfert's eye
Captain Clonfert's eye wound mirrors that of Nesbit Willoughby, captain of the Néréide, at the Battle of Grand Port in August 1810.
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- ReferenceThe 1789 iceberg
The Leopard's collision with an iceberg was inspired by what happened to HMS Guardian under Edward Riou in 1789.
source ↗ - ReferenceGovernor Bligh
Jack's mission is to bring help to Governor Bligh, the same man from the Bounty mutiny. He had been ousted in Australia's Rum Rebellion of 1808.
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- ReferenceTwo real battles
Both of the book's battles happened: HMS Java's loss to USS Constitution on December 29, 1812, and Shannon's win over Chesapeake on June 1, 1813.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesTwelve years without a US publisher
The book came out in the UK in 1979 and had no American edition until W. W. Norton reprinted it in 1991.
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- ReferenceThe Spaniards in Denmark
In 1807 Spain sent about 15,000 troops to Denmark, cut off from news from home. Grimsholm is invented, but it echoes those troops' real defection.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesEscape by privy
Locked up in the Temple in Paris, Jack, Stephen and Jagiello dig their escape route through the privy chute.
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- Reference42-pounders
The final battle draws on the real 1808 fight between HMS Seahorse and the Turkish frigate Badere Zaffer, which carried huge 42-pounder guns.
source ↗ - ReferenceLike Nelson
A sailor says Jack boarded "like Nelson," recalling Nelson's leap between Spanish ships at St Vincent. Nelson is Jack's role model.
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- ReferenceA Shakespeare title
The title comes from a line spoken by Suffolk in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesThe reader knows more
Part of the plot comes through conversations Jack and Stephen never hear. Readers learn about the betrayal before the heroes do.
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- ChangeAmerican becomes French
In the book the enemy is the American frigate USS Norfolk, during the War of 1812. The film swaps in a French privateer, the Acheron, and moves back to 1805 and the Napoleonic Wars.
source ↗ - ChangeA different end for Hollom
In the book, midshipman Hollom has an affair with the gunner's young wife and is killed by the husband. In the film, the crew brands him a Jonah and he throws himself overboard.
source ↗ - ChangeThe Galápagos are just a stop
In the book, the Surprise stops at the Galápagos and keeps hunting all the way to the Marquesas. Jack and Stephen fall overboard, and the Norfolk ends up wrecked on a reef. The film turns the islands into the stage for the final battle.
source ↗ - ChangeWhere's the spy?
The book opens with Stephen learning the French have infiltrated British intelligence. The film drops his spy work entirely, which Christopher Hitchens complained about.
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- ReferenceCochrane's fraud
The stock scandal and Jack's trial copy the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814, which brought down Thomas Cochrane. He was also sentenced to the pillory, though that part was later dropped.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesThe book that won over Norton
Starling Lawrence of W. W. Norton read this book in 1989 and talked the publisher into bringing the series to the US. In 2009 Russell Crowe said it would anchor a second film, which never happened.
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- Behind the scenesAn instant US hit
It was the first book in the series Norton published in both hardcover and paperback, in August 1990, and it sold right away.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesGeoff Hunt's debut
It was the first to carry Geoff Hunt's art on its first edition. Collins commissioned him in 1988, and his paintings became the face of the series.
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- ReferenceAn 1817 wreck
The reef wreck and what follows may draw on the loss of HMS Alceste, which hit an uncharted reef in the Gaspar Strait in 1817.
source ↗ - Behind the scenes"The best historical novels"
Richard Snow of The New York Times called the series "the best historical novels ever written," a line that helped win over American readers.
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- ReferenceNamed for a sultan
Jack names the ship Nutmeg of Consolation after one of the titles of the Sultan of Pulo Prabang.
source ↗ - ReferenceResearch from The Fatal Shore
In his author's note, O'Brian credits Robert Hughes's The Fatal Shore for his research on the New South Wales penal colony. Dr. Redfern was a real person.
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- Behind the scenesToo Austen for America
In the US the book became The Truelove, after a whaler in the plot. Per Dick Adler, American editors felt Clarissa Oakes sounded too much like Jane Austen.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesThe red dress
Clarissa's wedding dress is made from the red silk Jack had bought for Sophie.
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- ReferenceHomer's sea
The title is the English rendering of a phrase Homer uses again and again for the sea.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesThe Andes take their toll
Stephen's trek across the Andes, with llamas and a local guide, ends in a blizzard that costs him several toes.
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- ReferenceThe 1807 Act
Jack's squadron works under the Slave Trade Act 1807, which let the Royal Navy seize slave ships. Freed captives were taken to Freetown.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesBrigid speaks two languages
Stephen's daughter Brigid starts the book with developmental delays and improves a lot with Padeen around. Aboard the Ringle she speaks both Irish and English.
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- ReferenceYellow admiral
A "yellow admiral" was a captain promoted to rear admiral with no squadron. Since there was no yellow squadron, Jack sees it as an insult to his record.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesFighting for the common
At home, Jack uses his rights as lord of the manor to block the enclosure of Simmons Lea, a common his neighbor wants to fence off.
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- ReferenceThe Hundred Days
The title refers to the stretch when Napoleon escaped Elba and briefly retook power in France, up to Waterloo.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesThe diamond goes with her
The Blue Peter, Diana's precious diamond that runs through the earlier books, is buried with her.
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- ReferenceBlue at the mizzen
A blue flag at the mizzen marked a Rear Admiral of the Blue, the lowest flag rank in the Royal Navy of the day. Hence the title.
source ↗ - ReferenceCochrane in Chile
The plot echoes what Lord Cochrane really did: he built and led Chile's navy from 1818. The real Esmeralda was captured in 1820.
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- Behind the scenesThree chapters in 1999
In 1999 O'Brian told an interviewer he was three chapters into a 21st book, even though the series was considered finished. He died in January 2000.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesThe doodled dinner
The manuscript facsimile includes O'Brian's doodled seating plan for an imaginary dinner aboard ship.
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