MovieChat Forums > Kind Hearts and Coronets Discussion > A Source for KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS

A Source for KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS

posted 21 years ago by theowinthrop
3 replies | jump to latest

Everyone remembers that sequence when Alec Guinness is Admiral Horatio D'Ascoyne, and manages to cause a naval catastrophe that causes his demise.
If you recall he was at sea, and on maneuvres, when he ordered his flagship to port rather than starboard, causing it to collide with his second ship, and causing both to sink (although only Admiral Lord Horatio dies as a result).

It actually happened on June 22, 1893 off Tripoli, Libya. Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon, the leading strategist in the Victorian navy, was on maneuvres, with the entire Mediterranean Squadron under his command. It was divided in two columns, his led by his flagship, H.M.S. Victoria, and the other by H.M.S. Camperdown (under Rear Admiral Albert Hastings Markham). Tryon ordered the two columns to turn in on each other at less than 3000 cables distance between them.
He always enjoyed novel orders and directions. Unfortunately, the turning cable
(the amount of space needed for one of these 1893 British warships to turn safely around without collision) was 6000 cables. The result was that Markham's ship rammed Tryon's, and sank it. Tryon died. Unfortunately, so did
322 other British seamen. It was less amusing than the movie version (and only one ship sank).

[–] benrenki 20 years ago

In Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia (Limited), which premiered in October, 1893, a group of British bureaucrats are imported to a South Sea isle by an anglophile king. One of the so-called "flowers of progress," representing the Royal Navy, reprises Captain Corcoran's song from H.M.S. Pinafore, singing,

Though no longer hearts of oak,
Yet we can steer and we can stoke,
And, thanks to coal and thanks to coke,
We never run a ship ashore!

The lines were perceived by reviewers as a reference to the Victoria-Camperdown collision, and Gilbert was accused of making light of a disaster.

[–] 20 years ago

[deleted]

[–] theowinthrop 20 years ago

Actually I did make a muddle of the figures, but the basic circumstances of the collision are what I put down. Sorry about the muddle.

The best accounts I have read are Richard Hough's old study of the incident: ADMIRALS IN COLLISION. Also Rupert Gould wrote an essay on the incident in his book ENIGMAS. By the way, there was an actual photograph of the last moments of the "Victoria", as it went under. Gould has it as the frontispiece in ENIGMAS.

The wreck of the "Victoria" was found in the last few years. It is not like the "Titanic" in chunks, or flattened like the "Lusitania". It had two very heavy guns on either side, and they both pulled the ship down straight. It looks like it is still sinking underwater.

One of the few survivors of the disaster was a young officer who had been in the sickbay that day, but who managed to get to the deck and swim until picked up. It was John Jellicoe, who rose to eventually be First Sea Lord, and the Admiral in Chief of the British forces at the battle of Jutland in 1916.

Getting back to the movie, although it was welcome to see that one of the dead D'Ascoynes was not murdered by Louis, it is interesting to note what he was thinking of doing. Just before the disaster sequence, Louis is shown examining the plans of a torpedo. I still wonder about that one - would it have been like the homing torpedo used in THE GREAT RACE by Professor Fate and Max (Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk) against the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis). Presumably it would not have back fired (literally) as the one that Lemmon and Falk used.