Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.

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Captain Horatio Hornblower

Directed by	Raoul Walsh
Produced by	Gerry Mitchell
Written by	C.S. Forester Ivan Goff Ben Roberts Aeneas MacKenzie
Starring	Gregory Peck Virginia Mayo Robert Beatty Terence Morgan
Music by	Robert Farnon
Cinematography	Guy Green
Editing by	Jack Harris
Release date(s)	1951
Running time	117 min.
Country	UK
Language	English
Budget	$3,000,000
IMDb profile

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (released in the U.S. without the "R.N.") is a 1951 naval adventure film. It was directed by Raoul Walsh and stars Gregory Peck, Virginia Mayo, and Robert Beatty.

It was based upon three of the Horatio Hornblower novels of C. S. Forester, The Happy Return (Beat to Quarters in the United States), A Ship of the Line, and Flying Colours. Forester shared writing credits; the film was faithful to his novels and features an occasionally introspective tone unusual for an old-fashioned swashbuckler.

1 Plot
2 Background and Production
3 Cast
4 Other versions
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] Plot

HMS Lydia

Opening Narration:
"In the year eighteen hundred and seven, a small ship of the Royal Navy set sail from England for a secret destination. With five million French and Spanish soldiers poised on the Continent under Napoleon, nothing could save England from invasion except her 300 ships.

"HMS Lydia was soon far beyond battle-charged Europe. Under the most secret of sealed orders, she sailed for southern waters, fought her way around the Horn... headed north again into the Pacific.

For seven months, she stayed out of sight of land. Becalmed finally, her weary crew toiled at the oars in the vain hope of towing her into a wind. They thirsted and hungered and wondered where she was going, what they would do when they got there... if she got there.

"These were things known only to one man."

That man is Captain Horatio Hornblower (Gregory Peck) commanding the 36-gun frigate HMS Lydia. His mission is to provide arms and support to the megalomaniac calling himself "El Supremo" or "The Almighty" (Alec Mango) in his rebellion against Spain, an ally of Britain's enemy France during the Napoleonic Wars. As Hornblower noted to First Lieutenant Bush (Robert Beatty): "War breeds strange allies, Mr. Bush."

Upon his arrival, the Englishman is told that a larger, much more powerful Spanish warship, the 50-gun Natividad, has been sighted. When it anchors nearby, Hornblower and his crew board and capture it in a surprise night-time attack. He then reluctantly hands the ship over to El Supremo to appease the madman and they go their separate ways.

Later, he encounters a small Spanish vessel with a pair of troublesome passengers. First, a Spanish official informs him (and provides proof) that Spain has switched sides. Then Lady Barbara Wellesley (Virginia Mayo) "requests" passage back to England for her and her maid. Due to a deadly epidemic raging ashore and her influential relations (she is the fictitious sister of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington), Hornblower is in no position to refuse, even though he has to find and sink the Natividad. Using masterful tactics, he accomplishes his mission.

Gregory Peck as Captain Horatio Hornblower

On the voyage back to England, Lady Barbara falls ill (of what Hornblower mistakenly believes is yellow fever) and is nursed back to health by him. They spend many enjoyable nights talking and playing whist, and fall in love, but he rejects her advances as he is married, to her embarrassment.

After arriving home, he learns that his wife Maria has died. Hornblower is given command of the Sutherland, a powerful ship of the line captured from the French, and is assigned to a squadron commanded by Rear Admiral Sir Rodney Leighton (Denis O'Dea), Lady Barbara's pompous new husband. The squadron's mission is to enforce the British blockade against Napoleonic France.

At a conference onboard Leighton's flagship, Hornblower urges a wide deployment to counter any sortie of the French Navy in support of Napoleon's land campaign on the Spanish penisula. Because Sutherland has the shallowest draft of the four ships in the squadron, Hornblower is given the inshore position closest to the French coast. However, a jealous and suspicious Leighton expressly forbids Hornblower from taking any independent action without his prior permission.

Hornblower's French-built ship is subsequently mistaken for a friendly vessel by a French ship, making for its easy capture. While interrogating a disguised French diplomat, Hornblower learns the enemy's recognition signal for the day, as well as vital intelligence that four French ships of the line have slipped the British blockade and are heading to Spain, carrying troops and supplies to the French armies there.

Virginia Mayo as Lady Barbara Wellesley

Faced with the urgency of the situation, Hornblower decides on his own initiative to attempt to find and sink the ships. He locates them anchored in a harbor guarded by a well-armed fort. By flying a French flag and the recognition signal, as well as taking advantage of the appearance of Sutherland's French-built design, Hornblower fools the French garrison into believing the Sutherland is a French ship-of-the-line, enters the harbor unhindered, and manages to sink or damage all four anchored ships. The French fort then opens fire, and Hornblower, First Lieutenant Bush, and the rest of the crew are forced to abandon ship.

The rest of the British squadron arrives shortly afterwards to complete the job; Leighton is killed in the resulting battle. Hornblower and Bush, accompanied by seaman Quist (James Robertson Justice), are taken by carriage to Paris to be tried on the trumped-up charge of spying. They manage to escape en route and make their way to a port. Disguised as Dutch officers, they board The Witch of Endor, a captured British ship, overpower the skeleton crew, free a working party of British prisoners of war to man her, and sail away to freedom.

At his mandatory courtmartial, Hornblower is acquitted and becomes a national hero. With Maria and Lady Barbara's husband both deceased, the two lovebirds are reunited.

[edit] Background and Production

Warner Bros. acquired the films rights to the first three Hornblower novels -- Beat to Quarters (1937), A Ship of the Line (1938), and Flying Colours (1938) -- as a star vehicle for Errol Flynn when they were initially published. However, after the financial failure of the 1948 adventure romance film Adventures of Don Juan, as well as growing difficulties with the actor, Flynn was not cast. Warners was already building up Burt Lancaster as their new swashbuckling screen star, but the role of a British sea captain seemed to be outside of his range, so Peck was ultimately cast on a loan-out from David O. Selznick who received screen credit in the opening titles.

The film cost $3,000,000 to make, and was filmed in studios inside the United Kingdom, at HMS Victory, and on locations in France.^[1]^[2] To save costs, the Hispaniola set from the 1950 Disney film adaptation of Treasure Island was reused as the frigate HMS Lydia. However, the ship was rocked instead of moving the horizon background, which caused many problems because of the combined weight of ship crew and equipment. The Italian brigantine Marcel B. Surdo represented the The Witch of Endor for all at-sea exterior footage.^[3] The Marcel B. Surdo would also appear in such seafaring films as The Crimson Pirate, The Master of Ballantrae, and John Paul Jones.^[4]

The film made its world-wide premiere in New York City on September 13, 1951.

[edit] Cast

Gregory Peck as Captain Horatio Hornblower, R.N.
Virginia Mayo as Lady Barbara Wellesley
Robert Beatty as First Lieutenant William Bush
Terence Morgan as Second Lieutenant Gerard, an officer on the Lydia
Moultrie Kelsall as Third Lieutenant Crystal, an officer on the Lydia
James Kenney as Midshipman Longley
James Robertson Justice as Seaman Quist, who helps Hornblower and Bush escape
Denis O'Dea as Rear Admiral Sir Rodney 'Mucho Pomposo' Leighton
Richard Hearne as Polwheal, Hornblower's steward
Michael Dolan as Surgeon Gundarson
Stanley Baker as Mr. Harrison, Hornblower's bosun
Alec Mango as El Supremo (Don Julian Alvarado)
Christopher Lee as the Spanish captain of the Natividad
Ingeborg von Kusserow as Hebe, Lady Barbara's maid
Amy Veness as Mrs. McPhee, Hornblower's housekeeper
Diane Cilento as the voice of Hornblower's wife Maria, reciting a letter written to him on her deathbed

[edit] Other versions

Opening Titles

Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo recreated their roles on a one-hour Lux Radio Theater program broadcast on January 21, 1952, which is included as an audio-only feature in the film's DVD release.^[5]