Getting back to the OP, it’s surely a lot easier taking a ship from a surprised skeleton crew, who by definition aren’t exactly the best motivated among the regular crew.
Esp. with a cunning and determined warrior type leader.
I mean, they have a plan already and it’ll get executed, presumably, pretty well.
Thanks! I’ve been waiting for years for this to happen!
If Gerard Depardieu could put on a convincing English accent, he would easily fit the descriptions of Lucky Jack. Crow was a good Jack, but he’s too fit and too pretty.
A Frenchman play Jack Aubrey? What stuff. Only a poteen swilling Papist could think that’s a good idea.
They can’t help. They are only foreigners.
Pass the poteen, dude. I need a drink.
The bottle stands beside you, Ms. Grandmother.
Sounds like good stuff. 
Right. The other issue about the treacherous French Captain staying aboard is that common sailors can’t navigate - that’s one of the reasons you always take the officers off a captured ship. So even if they thought about retaking the ship, they’d just be sailing aimlessly until they ran aground on the wild South American coast, or starved. But with an officer on board, they’ve got an actual chance of getting back to France.
Why do you say that? I thought that sailing a prize home was regarded as a plum job.
And **Muldoonthief **obviously the Frenchman thing is a bit anomalous (just a bit) but the physical match is good.
Because they’re just taking a prize back to a port and the captain would want to keep the fighters among his crew as he continues looking for enemy ships and/or more prizes.
[QUOTE=Princhester]
Why do you say that? I thought that sailing a prize home was regarded as a plum job.
[/QUOTE]
Only by the provisional captain, who might be able to work that into a promotion and perhaps even get the ship itself, assuming it’s bought into service. It would suck for the crew in most regards, since they still probably wouldn’t get shore leave, and would probably be put on another ship…and while sailing it home would be unlikely to get new prizes.
Of course, staying on the warship would suck as well, since life in the RN as a regular seaman pretty much blew chunks, from what I’ve read anyway.
[QUOTE=Baker]
My sister prefers Hornblower, I prefer Jack Aubrey. Hornblower is too angsty for my taste.
[/QUOTE]
My preference was the Hornblower books as well. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the adventures of Jack and the Doc, but Horatio was the man, and for me the stories were more ‘real’…and and also more emotionally engaging. ‘Beat to quarters, Mr. Bush!’…gods, I remember shouting that out and having folks give me extremely funny looks. 
I’m such a geek…
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Yeah, Horatio would take on the French fleet with a rowboat, seaman Brown and a sharp stick. Aubrey would run like hell. Guess who I want driving my boat?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but Hornblower would win. Besides, I can remember Aubrey doing some fairly crazy and going up against seemingly impossible odds a time or two. And I remember Aubrey doing some really silly and stupid things as well, though they ended up working out in the end. Aubrey always struck me as really mercenary, which probably WAS more ‘real’, as RN captains of the time went, but Hornblower was just…well, heroic.
Of course, it’s been years since I read either series. I see that Audible.com has what looks to be the entire Aubrey series (sadly, they don’t seem to have any of the Forrester books 
), so, maybe I’ll have to start downloading them, since this old thread has rekindled my interest (and I just finished the Sharpe’s Rifles series lately, so some good old fashioned Napoleonic War stuff would go down well atm).
-XT
IIRC, Russell Crowe first showed up on the set having putting on a fairly good bit of weight. Peter Weir was impressed, but wasn’t willing to take his obsession with authenticity to the point of having an overweight Jack or a physically unattractive Stephen.
Some bits of casting were noticeably off. Barrett Bonden ought to have been a large, muscular guy rather than a hobbit. Nagel was a middle-aged man rather than a lad in his late teens/early 20s. On the other hand, I can’t possibly imagine a better Killick, Joe Plaice, Padeen, or Awkward Davies.
As far as the ending goes, it’s pretty much in sync with the style of the novels. O’Brien sometimes finishes a volume at a clean, satisfying conclusion resolution, sometimes at a cliffhanger, and sometimes at a moment that seems almost random. And in some of these cases, the next story picks up months or years later.
Bumped.
Just came across this interesting 2003 appraisal of the film by historians of the period: https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=10557
I thought this was an interesting bit:
Seeing as, from what I recall of the books, the tiny amount of powder and shot officially allowed for practise purposes, compared to what Jack (and some other captains) think should be allowed, and their subsequent need to pay for supplies out of their own pockets, is a point of conflict right through all the books.
It seems the experts generally liked the film though
I take issue with these 2 statements:
The books constantly repeat that the RN, and Jack in particular, are much more pugilistic and aggressive than their counterparts in other navies. British ships would routinely attack vessels somewhat superior to them in size & armament, because they were convinced their advantage in bravery & tactics would overcome that. And Jack’s orders were to take, burn, sink or destroy the Acheron. He would do anything to fulfill those orders.
I thought they did this quite well at the beginning of the movie - when the Acheron first hit the Surprise with a surprise broadside. Tons of blood, screaming sailors, Blakeney staring in disbelief at his shattered arm. They didn’t dwell on it in later battles, because the point had already been made at the beginning of the movie.