SUBMITTED BY Timbo

November 17, 2003 — It's a breathtaking epic with glorious action and great reviews, but just how historically accurate is "Master and Commander"? The New York Times tackles the subject.

Peter Weir, who wrote (with John Collee), produced (with Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and Duncan Henderson) and directed the film, was also intrigued by the Galapagos (where no feature film had been shot before), but he could hardly have expected an American audience to cheer a handsome British commander with orders to sink an American warship that had been preying upon the British whaling fleet. Thus he invents the Acheron, sets the story in 1805 and, to heighten the action, lets it be known that should the Acheron enter the Pacific, Napoleon will have found a new world to conquer.

Why this most unlikely achievement should be so is never explained, especially since the Acheron's mission, like that of O'Brian's Norfolk seven years later, is only to plunder English whalers. Neither is it explained why the Admiralty sends the Surprise across the Atlantic in the fateful year 1805 when Lord Nelson needs every frigate he can muster to defend the homeland or why the French send the formidable Acheron to interfere with whalers when the combined French and Spanish fleets are preparing to gather at Toulon and Cadiz for the climactic battle that will end later that year, disastrously for them, at Trafalgar, ending as well any lingering French hope of a cross-Channel invasion. Can it be that Mr. Weir wants filmgoers to believe that by crimping England's source of whale oil, Napoleon can bring the British to their knees without an invasion and go on to conquer the world?

Audiences familiar with the vagaries of ocean navigation will also wonder how, with global positioning technology two centuries in the future, the Acheron pinpoints the Surprise in the vast South Atlantic and through an eerie fog sends, without radar or laser technology, a thundering salvo right onto Aubrey's gun deck. Amid the wreckage and bloodshed Maturin blandly explains that French spies are everywhere (presumably including Majorca, Surprise's home port) as a second French salvo rips through the rigging. But given the uncertain winds even Aubrey himself, much less a French spy on distant Majorca in telepathic communication with the Acheron, is unlikely to have known yesterday just where he would be today.

Read the full article (free registration required) at the link below.