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THE SHIPS of MASTER AND COMMANDER
Leon Poindexter, Master Shipwright
Seaport Vessels
27 Jerden's Lane
Rockport, MA 01966
978-546-2150
leonpoindexter@aol.com
The whole idea for the film Master and Commander, the Far Side of the
World began about a dozen years ago. Tom Rothman, an executive of 20th
Century Fox, read the Aubrey/Maturin series and proposed the idea to
Samuel Goldwyn. Jr. who after reading the series agreed it would make a
good film. With over twenty books in the series, they had trouble
developing a script that would fit the screen. Goldwyn pitched the idea
to director, Peter Weir, who had made such films as Gillipoli, Picnic
at Hanging Rock, Witness, Dead Poets Society, and The Truman Show.
Peter read the series through twice but said that while he loved the
series it would not make a good film and initially turned down the
project. Later, at another meeting, Tom Rothman gave Peter a sword and
asked him to take charge of the project. Peter was still doubtful but
said that the movie needed to start at sea. "If I were going to do
O'Brian I would start somewhere in the middle with one of the long
voyages. I want to be at sea, to open the picture at sea and hardly
touch land." The final script may have turned out to be quite
different from the books, but part of Peter's idea from the start was
to capture the rich detail of O'Brian in the ships and the men. The
ship itself was to be far more than just a movie set.
SEARCH FOR A SHIP
The search for a ship to play the Surprise took Peter Weir and the
production executives all over the world and finally ended up in
Newport, Rhode Island to see the sail-training vessel, Rose. Here was
what they had been looking for. She was a close match, and for sale!
The Rose was not a new vessel. She was built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
in 1970. There would be a lot of repairs, changes and retrofitting
needed to have her look like the Surprise. The Surprise of the Patrick
O'Brian's fiction was in fact a real frigate. She began her life as
the French Le Unite', built in Le Harvre in 1794, and in 1796 was
captured by the British, renamed and commandeered into their own navy.
COMPARED LINES
We were able to obtain a set of the real Surprise's line drawings drawn
by the dockyard from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich,
England. We compared her line drawings with the lines of the original
Rose constructed in Hull, England in 1757 and the lines of our Rose
replica and it was a close match. We found the real Surprise to be only
a few feet longer than the Rose replica but about the same beam and
draft. But here needed to be some significant changes. The original
Rose predated the Surprise by about 40 years. One of the major
differences was the Rose had a square bow and the Surprise had a round
bow. The old style square beak head bulkhead had to be changed to the
newer round bow, the style towards the end of the 18th century.
DEMAND FOR DETAILS
From the first time that Peter Weir, the director, and the producers
arrived in Newport to check out the Rose, Peter made it very clear that
he was looking for a very high degree of historic accuracy and detail.
This meant the Rose needed to be re-rigged from her sailing school rig
that more resembled late 19th century rigs to those of the late 18th
century, and even included the need to eliminate the crane irons on the
course yards and retrofit them with jeer blocks.
RE-RIGGING
All wire shrouds had to be made the diameter of the old hemp standing
rig. Rose's sails were old and obviously a synthetic material. A whole
new set of sails had to be made to specs and design of the 18th century.
Royals and stun sails were to be added and new fighting tops. The new
sails were sewn by Jim Brink in California.
CHANGES
The entire weather deck would have to be stripped of 20th century
superstructures and raised hatch combings to give her the appearance of
an open waist. It ws immediately evident that she needed solid
bulwarks, hammock nets, a double ship's wheel, a new transom, stern and
quarter galleries, and carved head rails.
DRAWINGS ON THE WALLS
While the Rose was on the marine railway in Newport I began to do
preliminary drawings in the evenings. Using the motel walls as my
drawing board, I compared the lines and deck plans of the Rose to the
real Surprise and drew preliminary sail and deck plans.
CORRESPONDENCE WITH PETER WEIR
I started corresponding with Peter Weir, sending him packets of
research material and sketches. I made so many phone calls to New
South Wales that the phone company called me to let me know that
someone was using my credit card to call Australia. I live on a farm
and one day I got a cell phone call while I was visiting my neighbor in
his hen house. I told my neighbor to please keep the chickens quiet
because it was Hollywood calling.
PROJECT GOES AWAY
After the initial meetings filled with great excitement, the project
seemed to fade away, and everyone started looking for other work.
Months went by and suddenly the project was on again. Peter Weir got
his frigate. I was informed they had decided to "pull the trigger".
Meetings with the head of the marine department in Gloucester and
Newport got under way, and we began to look at possible east coast
shipyards.
NEWPORT DRYDOCK
The first phase of work had to take place in dry-dock in Newport to
refit and re-power the ship for her trip through the Panama Canal to
San Diego. The first phase was structural and mechanical, as the Rose
desperately needed new mast partners, new engines, bilge piping, some
new planks, caulking, and copper sheathing in the bow.
We began work in November; just in time for the cold New England
weather.
HOLLYWOOD
With the initial phase complete, the Rose was ready to sail. She left
January 1st for the Panama Canal, and I left for Hollywood a couple of
days later.
As I waited for the Rose to arrive, I worked with the art department at
Fox Studios in a suite of offices overlooking a street in lower
Manhattan. It was the set for NYPD Blue. Further on down the street
were the studios for the Simpsons and various sound stages where they
filmed Planet of the Apes. I began to wonder; what this was going to be
like. The first day they showed me the plans the art
department drew for the Surprise. It looked more like an over carved
pirate ship than a frigate of the Napoleonic era.
DECK BEAMS
Then they told me that the deck head, the height of the bottom of the
deck beams to the sole, was to be over 6 feet.
"Well, not if it is to be anything like reality," I said.
"Well, what was it really," they asked.
"5 feet," I replied. I showed them on the plans of the authentic
Surprise that we had gotten from Whitehall.
"Well, we can't do 5 feet. We'll never get the camera equipment in
that space, Can you compromise with us?""
"OK. Make it 5 feet 7 and inches."
"Why the 7 inches?"they asked.
"Because I am 5 feet 7 and with the extra half inch I will be able to walk
under all the deck beams without having to duck my head. The rest of
you tall suckers, well..."
When the filming began, the cameramen wore motorcycle crash helmets.
In my research I came across a letter from a Royal Naval surgeon who
was asking for permission to conduct a study to determine if the high
rate of lunacy in the Royal Navy was due in part to the men constantly
smacking their heads on the deck beams. Peter Weir had a deck beam
of foam core made up and installed across the entrance to the
film's suite of offices so that everyone, including the Fed X man,
would have to learn to duck under the beams.
DRAWINGS THROWN OUT
The film's drawings were thrown out, and I went to work in the art
department as advisor to the set designers. We redesigned the Rose
based on the Admiralty drawings. TriCoastal's, Peter Budreau, was there
as consultant and naval architect with computerized lines drawings of
the Rose taken while she was on the marine railways in Newport. Gary
Deaton, head of the construction department set, needed the
lines of the enemy ship based on the U.S.S. Constitution and the lines of
the Rose for the tank version of the Surprise.
TANK VERSION OF THE ROSE
Oh, I didn't tell you. Besides the Rose, there was a full sized carbon
copy of the Rose built in Baja, Mexico in the middle of the same 4
acre, 17 million gallon horizon tank where they filmed Titanic. This
land locked version of the Surprise was completed all the way around,
unlike the Titanic, that had only one side done. To save the cost of
building both sides of the Titanic , they flopped the negatives to show
the other side.
The other thing was that the tank version of the Surprise had to sit
atop a 40-foot gimbal, the largest ever in film making, to give the
ship its rolling and pitching motion at sea. This posed some
interesting engineering problems like what to do about the wind
pressure on the sails of a ship that doesn't move. The energy
transferred down the masts would exert a pressure of several extra tons
on the gimbal mechanism. If the pressure exceeded a certain amount, a
warning was given and sails would have to be struck immediately.
Experienced crew members of the Rose had to be on hand to furl the
sails at a moment's notice and were included as background actors.
WHY THE TANK?
The real Rose was used in the shots where you see Surprise at sea, but
most of the shots that were close up and on deck were filmed in the
tank version. With the Rose it was evident that it was going to be a
problem to fit over a hundred extras, the principals, film crew,
cameras and lighting, hair, makeup and costume on a ship only about 110
feet on deck. It would be impossible to shoot entirely at sea. Actors
can't perform when they are seasick, and there was a lot of that!
Camera gear can interfere with the safe operation of the ship. Daily
trips in and out of port would add several hours to each day and cost
even more money. Sun and sails play havoc with lighting, and shooting
would be terribly slow because it would be dictated by the weather.
The tank version gave the producers the ability to shoot at anytime, in
any weather and from stable platforms.
Duncan Henderson, who also did the Perfect Storm and Deep Blue Sea,
explained that they had done extensive studies on the pros and cons of
filming entirely at sea and said it would be a financial drain when you
are at the mercy of the weather. For example, you can't film a storm
scene in the doldrums, and they don't call it the Pacific Ocean for
nothing.
STORM SCENE
In the tank, you can make the storm happen on cue. The storm scenes
were shot with the ship rolling and pitching on the gimbals, two jet
engines with fire hoses in front of them for wind and driving rain, and
500 gallon dump tanks on 50 ft towers for seas breaking on deck. In the
background, they used actual footage taken on the Endeavor when she
went around Cape Horn in March of 2002. So the storm scenes were
actually a combination of a controlled scene; actual, real storm
footage of Cape Horn, and computer graphics to put it all together.
ROSE IN TROUBLE
Speaking of storms.....
While I was warm and dry and enjoying my stay in sunny Hollywood, back
on the high seas the Rose was in serious trouble.
The worst time to leave Newport for a two-month voyage to California
through the Panama Canal was the first week of January. It turned into
a pretty dramatic journey; within a few days they encountered huge
storms. Winds over seventy knots. At the first stop in Puerto Rico
the crew did repairs and headed for Panama. But there was further
damage. As they were sailing in fine Caribbean weather, the main
topgallant mast, weakened by the storm, suddenly blew to pieces. It
took the topgallant sail on its yard and pitched it into the braces of
the fore topgallant and broke that yard, too. The topsail was a mess
and impossible to strike. She went from sailing happily along to
having all those yards and sails and rigging dangling like "a mobile
from hell". And on top of that, night was falling. Repairs and jury
rig were made at sea and in the dark. In the morning, it was
discovered that the main topmast was also broken. Fortunately, no one
was hurt.
MOVE TO FOX BAJA
Meanwhile the entire movie crew moved operations from Hollywood to
Roserito, Mexico on the Baja Peninsula about 45 minutes south of
Tijuana. Fox Studios in Baja is a vast, 40-acre complex of workshops
and sound stages built for the filming of Titanic and used in filming
of Pearl Harbor.
HORIZON TANK
The main feature among rows of warehouse looking buildings is the four
acre four foot deep horizon tank. The way the horizon tank works is
that it is filled to the brim. As you look out across it to the Pacific
Ocean beyond, there seems to be no line between the top edge of the
tank and the ocean. The ship in it appears to be in the real ocean.
What seems weird is to see cranes and heavy equipment vehicles being
driven about in the Pacific.
ART DEPARTMENT
The art department was relocated in a building the size of an aircraft
hanger with an expanded staff of seventeen draftsmen and artists. Some
had worked on Titanic and Perfect Storm. Hundreds of plans were all
drawn by hand, no computers were used. At Peter Weir's urging I
researched details on the other interior sets as well. Because of the
fact that the real Surprise was built by the French, the design of the
ship's knees and the underside of the decking were all French. While,
features that would have been changed in the Royal Navy's dockyards,
like the belfry, hammock netting, yards, shot racks etc.,would be Royal
Navy. The interior of the ship, the gun deck, the berthing deck, the
great cabin and the orlop decks were built on sound stages first used
to film Titanic.
We knew how to do ships; they knew how to do movies. It was an
education for them and me. It was always awkward to present details
thinking they will never go this far, but their acceptance of my plans
was probably 95%. I worked with each of the set designers as they did
their blue prints often standing at their drawing boards and doing
sketches and answering questions to help with the drawings and checking
all of the finished drawings.
CHICKEN COOP
One detail that was hard to explain was the chicken coops. I told them
that, "The chicken coops were located on the quarter deck directly
above the captain's quarters."
Immediately I heard, "No way would they have farm animals directly
above the captain's quarters."
"Well, you have to think like they did in the 18th century. The
sailors were eating salt horse and hard tack filled with weevils. If
they were lucky enough to catch a rat which they called millers because
they were white from getting into the flour, they bribed the cook to
fix them as a delicacy. The quarterdeck was always under Marine guard.
Now where do you think was the safest place to keep the chickens?"
LANGUAGE
Another challenge was teaching movie people the archaic language of
ships. Correct terminology was important to eliminate confusion.
Everyone had to be on the same page. But it sometimes took a lot of
patience. Spiling was often called spiraling. Cross trees and trestle
trees got confused. And ceiling was, of course, terribly confusing at
first. I was talking about painting the ceiling ochre and they were
looking at me funny thinking it should be white.
THE BELL
I even researched and helped design the ship's bell, which was cast in Spain. It
turned out it had the perfect pitch and was used in the sound effects.
THE HEADS
Peter Weir was interested in showing shipboard life as well as action.
One day he asked me where was the head. I said, "You are going to love
this! It is in the head rails for the enlisted men and the quarter
gallery for the captain." I never dreamed he would actually show it in
the film.
START WORK ON ROSE
After the sets were designed and their construction begun, I went to
San Diego to meet the storm battered Rose and put together a 25 man
shipwright crew to begin work. Only days before the haul-out in a
floating dry-dock, a shipwright crew had to be found and flown in. I
called on guys I had previously worked with on the East coast and some
good men recommended on the West coast.
LOTS TO DO
By now we had quite a list of things to do: the round bow, new upper
stem, head rails, wash cants, new bowsprit, close in the bulwarks, new
stern, fighting tops, cut in two gun ports, the open waist, replace
most of the quarterdeck, new cat heads, bollard heads, stern and
quarter galleries, add a whale, and copper the bottom, not to mention
caulking and painting.
The overall plan was to put the Rose in a floating dry-dock at the
South End Shipyards in San Diego to do all the bottom and topside work
and the basic rigging of the lower masts. When all that was completed,
we needed to move the ship to Ensanada, just South of Fox Baja, to
finish the topsides, deck, galleries, head rails and rigging pier side.
3 MONTHS
We only had about three months to do the carpentry and copper the
bottom, and get the ship ready for filming. We had 20 to 25 shipwrights
at work in San Diego and Ensanada plus about 50 more men from Fox's set
construction crew and painters on the ship at the same time, not
counting the riggers. The movie people had the idea that if it takes x
days to do the work with 50 men then you can get it done in half the
time with 100. My biggest problem was to keep the Hollywood painters
from painting the work before the shipwrights had finished it. The
other major problem was getting wood to Mexico. All they had there was
cactus and scrub trees. In New England I am used to going into the
woods with the sawyer and picking out and felling the trees with just
the right sweeps. On the West coast the oak had to be shipped in from
the Midwest and fir from the Northwest.
REAL WORK
Capt. Bailey rightfully insisted that the changes in the bow, head
rails, stem, round bow stern and galleries had to be real and
substantial and able to stand up to real sea conditions for the ship to
be at sea. No temporary plywood add ons.
The only set decorating was the moldings and trim work, which was
prefabbed at the Fox workshop and installed in Ensanada.
MOVE TO ENSANADA
During the move of the Rose and operations from San Diego to Ensanada,
all the patterns and loftings were lost at the border. So, we had to
re-create them in the ballroom at the Hotel. The dance floor became
the mold loft.
PAINT
While working in Ensanada, a controversy arose about the condition and
the paint on the ship. Already the art director had quit the film and
there was a great division over whether or not the ship should be neat
and clean and painted; reasoning that there were about 200 men on board
to do the daily maintenance, Not aware of the size of the controversy,
I was called to settle the dispute. My research showed that while the
men holy stoned the decks and polished the brass with brick dust there
simply was not enough paint allotted to the ships to maintain them in
Bristol fashion. Besides I had been in the US Navy and gone to sea on
a destroyer and knew that it only took a couple of weeks for the best
paint job to look like it had been through war. I took pictures of the
's fore peak to show the dinginess and run rust. Also, I found a
letter from a captain of a frigate to the admiralty board asking
whether with the paint he was allotted he should paint the starboard
side or the larboard. I also found a manifest listing the quantities
of paint allotted for the frigates. Also found in my research was a
letter from a discouraged young midshipman, obviously not used to the
squalor of the ships of the line, complaining to his folks about the
disappointing appearance of the ship.
THE PAINTERS
Paint was made to look old as soon as it was applied. The painters
were amazing artists and made the best paint that could be bought look
as if it were several years old, complete with realistic run rust. I
told the lead painter that if you worked for me and made the paint on a
new boat look like that he would be fired. He responded, "Thank you
for the compliment."
OTHER DETAILS
There were many other details such as removable panels, brodie stove,
manger, chain pumps, binnacle box, flag lockers, chicken coops not seen
in other movies. Even the anchor cable was switched, when in the story
the ship crossed the equator, from one hawsehole to the other.
I computed the size of the bower anchors from a mathematical formula
based on the beam of the ship.
RIGGING
Jim Barry and his crew did an amazing job on the rigging. They rigged
both the real Rose, the tank boat, and the French super frigate,
Acheron. The Rose was stripped down to the lowers and new authentic
fighting tops were built and installed as well as all new upper hamper.
Miles of cordage and the 600 rope
stropped blocks for both ships were manufactured in his shop in
Rosorito. Ten sails were added to make a total of 27. About 25 miles
of rope was used for the 3 ships. All the ironwork was made by hand by
blacksmiths at Baja studios.
TANK BOAT FINISHED
Meanwhile back at Fox Baja studios, the hull of the tank version of Surprise
was finished and then separated into 3 sections, moved
by a 300 ton crawler crane and installed atop the 40 foot gimbal, which
simulated the pitch and roll of the ship. That was quite realistic.
Work on the enemy ship, the Acheron was begun next to the carpentry
shop. The Acheron was modeled after the U.S.S. Constitution and was
about 90% the size.
THE OTHER SETS
The gun deck was constructed on a bluff overlooking the ocean so that
the horizon appeared in the gallery windows and was also on a gimbal. It
was a complete gun deck, both sides. There was a manger foreword of the
riding bitts. They even had a cow they led in just before the day's
filming along with a goat, a sheep and a pig. A working Brodie galley
stove was built by craftsmen from Italy in detail down to the last
bolt. I researched cannon and gun carriages. The gun deck also had
chain pumps for pumping the bilges, elm tree pumps, and cable lifters.
There were removable panels in the captain's quarters.
BERTHING DECK
The berthing deck was also complete on a gimbal with the officer's
cabin's wardroom steerage, plumbing for the chain pumps, and sickbay.
Again the basic construction of the inside of the hull, the overhead
and knees was French.
BACK TO 1805
At one point while filming on the Rose, we were well off shore and
waiting for the helicopter to show up for an ariel shot. All the
camera gear and other 21st century equipment, make up people and camera
crews were below. On deck everyone was in period dress. The chase
boats were sent away, and there was absolutely nothing 21st century to
be seen anywhere. The ship was under full sail, and the crew was doing
their work. It was a strange feeling - as if we had passed through a
time warp and were truly transported back to 1805.
SAN DIEGO MUSEUM
Since the premier of Master and Commander, the Rose has been on exhibit
at the San Diego Maritime Museum as the H.M.S. Surprise.
BEAVER
My latest project is another conversion. We are in the middle of
rebuilding the Boston Tea Party Ship at the new Gloucester Maritime
Heritage Center in Gloucester, Massachusetts. There we have a shipyard
and a 300-ton working marine railway, in use since 1849. The Beaver's
hull was built in Denmark in 1908. After the vessel was laid up, it was
purchased in the1970's and sailed to Boston and refitted to represent
the brig, Beaver. We are restoring the topsides, bulwarks and deck,
changing the stem and adding several features to more accurately
represent a Quaker whale ship from Nantucket, which she was. In 1773,
the original Beaver had delivered a cargo of whale oil to London and
returned with a cargo, part of which was the East India Company's
famous tea.
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