I don’t know if it’s still there, but for a while they kept the ship that was used in the movie at the Maritime Museum in San Diego. It was very cool to go on board, meet a guy who had a bit part in the movie, take pics, go down below, and so on.
If it’s still there and you ever get a chance to see it, go for it.
HOw the hell can you have Sam Panda if you don’t have Sophie? 
Hiding the Black girl in the cable tier has got to be one of the coolest things Jack ever did. Is that why he was disrated and served before the mast?
I’m also a big fan of the movie and I’ve read all the books several times (my favorite is H.M.S. Surprise), but I came in just to address this minor point. Master and Commander was a traditional three-act movie. A short first act culminating in the initiating event of Jack Aubrey deciding to pursue the Acheron instead of head back home, a LONG second act, and a third act beginning with Stephen spotting the Acheron off the coast of the Galapagos Islands, and the climax of the final battle.
Yep, still there. I just went on it a couple months ago - very cool.
I’m only partway through Forester’s books, but when does Hornblower become a nurse? 
More seriously, what happens when I’m done with O’Brien and Forester? How does life remain worth living?
One recommendation: David Feintuch’s Seafort saga sets Hornblower as space opera. It’s a bit more emotional, and targeted at a younger audience, but if you can’t get enough of the British Navy, give it a try.
One question: Somewhere on the Internet, someone must have made cutaway diagrams of the Surprise, showing where everything is aboard ship. Have any of you ever seen such a thing?
“No one could call you a light woman, Diana.”
The way that Jack marvels about the “Amazing modern age we live in” was a good example of this. We sort of laugh about the 19th century man marvelling about a new sailing ship, but the reality was that it really was an amazing breakthrough worth gawking over.
The one minor quibble that I had with the movie, and it is really minor, is the sailors cowering at the sound of the humpbacks singing. Would a group of 1810’s seamen, many of whom may have either worked as whalers or knew someone who did, actually react that way?
I think this was when they thought that were carrying a “Jonah”. They weren’t scared of the whales as whales, IMHO, but they were on a string of terrible bad luck and were letting their superstitions get the better of them.
In my opinion, all of the qualities that made the movie remarkable were directly attributable to the source material. Patrick O’Brien was a hell of a writer, and I’m blown away that anyone could find his books long-winded or unreadable. I’ve known some people who found the writing style difficult initially, but that’s the worst you could say. Just my 2 cents.
The *Surprise* was originally constructed as the *Rose*. A friend of mine was a professional tall ship sailor and a crew member on the *Rose* at the time. They actually kept several of the professional crew arround to sail the ship while the actors stood around a looked good, so he actually got a bit part in the movie. You can see him front and center watching the trepanning scene.There’s Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series, historical fiction about a British Army officer during the Napoleonic wars.
For more Hornblower-in-space, there’s David Weber’s Honor Harrington books. And I like Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, which is alternate history set during the Napoleonic Wars, and is kind of like a mashup of Hornblower and Dragonriders of Pern.
Much less Cacafuego, much more Waakzaamheid.
Desolation Island has Aubrey in temporary command of 50-gun HMS Leopard, a ship almost as detested by her crew (for her shoddy construction) as by the increasingly hostile Americans (for having – before Aubrey’s captaincy – fired on an American frigate that allegedly had deserters among its crew). In the South Atlantic, HMS Leopard, after losing many of its crew to a shipborne plague, encounters a 74-gun Dutch ship of the line that immediately gives chase. Outmanned and outgunned, Aubrey attempts to outrun the much larger ship. Sailing at top speed through fog and heavy seas, and despite employing every navigational stratagem in Aubrey’s considerable arsenal, Waakzaamheid reappears in Leopard’s wake with depressing regularity. The whole notion of the enemy ship as a phantom, the two captains staring at one another through their telescopes, and a certain conversation with Maturin (“What is it with this man?”) are all lifted from Desolation Island.
Great movie; I should see it again. The cast, cinematography, dialogue and costumes are all first-rate. Naval History magazine had an article not long after it came out, explaining how the production crew did a laser survey of the USS Constitution, digitized it and used it as the template for the SFX of the French frigate Acheron.
Have I killed some relative of his in battle? His boy, God forbid?
The final battle between the two ships was much more Cacafuego than Waakzaamheid though.
Yeah, after burning through the pages, the final fate of the *Waakzaamheid * was like hitting a brick wall.
Good point.
Got it on the 3rd try.
I have to put in a plug for the recorded books. Simple put, Master and Commander is the best recorded book ever. The book itself is a little tough to wade through (for me anyway) due to the very authentic detail and language but the recorded book, read by Patrick Kelly (IIRC) gets it exactly right. Go forth and listen!
he movie was OK but they just can’t capture the richness of the books in a two hour film.
Really? “literally”?
Please post a photo of your body physically attached to the screen - this I gotta see.