In Mexico, a second ship was built from scratch and placed in the same 6.5-acre (2.6-hectare) water tank that was used for Titanic. Everything had to look right, from the mooring cables to the aging of the sails. A scene where the H.M.S. Surprise is repaired after an enemy attack, proved a particular challenge.
"We poured through lists of lading and billing for similar ships on similar voyages to learn how much timber and how much glass the ship would carry, and how that was carried—to understand what could be repaired and what couldn't," said Gordon Laco, the lead historical consultant on the movie. "It's all there in the British Admiralty records. They were obsessive record keepers."
Life on board the ship was undoubtedly tough. Boys as young as eight years old worked as "powder monkeys," running back and forth to the gun deck delivering powder to the gun crews. But Laco says that a well-run ship wasn't the hellhole that Hollywood usually portrays it as.
"I bridle at the concentration camp images of the Navy that's in most movies," said Laco. "It's not in the interest of any service to treat people habitually the way you see them treated in films and books. It wasn't a humorous institution, for sure, but the job was to keep those men as healthy and willing as possible, because they were the sinews that drove the ship."
The most common complaints from crew members were not about the food, press gangs or lashings, Laco added, but instead about increases in pay, time off, and leadership.
An Age-Old Question
O'Brian's historical lesson was that times change, but people don't. Collee believes the conflict between Aubrey, a man of action, and Maturin, a person of contemplation, resonates today.
"I've always felt that a lot of modern films tackle without resolving this kind of problem of how a man should behave in the modern day," said Collee. "We're all attracted to the idea of a life of fighting and adventuring, but at the same time we're trying terribly hard to be this other kind of considerate, reflective figure.
"O'Brian's whole body of work is really a prolonged dialogue between those two types of people," said Collee. "The question that he poses is, where does the proper man sit between these two extremes?"
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