sovay | We are sure of a gun from each frigate we run from

Current Music: Peter Bellamy, "Poor Honest Men"

We are sure of a gun from each frigate we run from

spatch just read me a thing of beauty off the internet, namely this drunk history of USS Constitution vs. HMS Guerriere: "This is a big deal because the US Navy at this time consists of 6 dudes in a coracle with a rusted musket."

Now I want to rewatch Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) even though it's not quite the same war. (It is in the book.) I can't believe there were never any more of those. Short-sighted, Hollywood. I expected a sequel for years.

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Didn't they change the battle in Master and Commander from British vs American to British vs French as a concession to the US market?

Didn't they change the battle in Master and Commander from British vs American to British vs French as a concession to the US market?

Yes. The main plot is drawn from the novel The Far Side of the World (1984), but the setting was changed from the War of 1812 to the Napoleonic Wars and the enemy ship from the American Norfolk to the French Acheron. Which I continue to think is silly, especially since the enemy's nationality is irrelevant to the adventure of a pair of ships cat-and-mousing one another around the Horn and all the way to the Galápagos—in that sense the other ship is a McGuffin—but it was 2003 in America, so in hindsight it was probably inevitable. The film was my introduction to the series, in any case.

I spoke with some people connected to the film a year or two after it was made, and discovered that they had taken a bath on the film and so couldn't make the sequel they had expected to. According to the person I spoke with, viewers on either coast liked it, but nobody in the middle of the country went to see it.

According to the person I spoke with, viewers on either coast liked it, but nobody in the middle of the country went to see it.

Phooey. (I would not have assumed the audience for epic sea adventures needed an extant affinity for water!)