MovieChat Forums > The Enemy Below (1958) Discussion > Trick in book used in Master and Command...

Trick in book used in Master and Commander?

posted 14 years ago by bbbcouple
4 replies | jump to latest

I am unfamiliar with the Master and Commander series by Patrick O'Brien, in that I have only seen the movie starring Russell Crowe and have never read any of the twenty or so books in the series. There is a sequence in the movie showing a makeshift raft rigged with lights used as a decoy that sounds very close to a trick used against the Germans in the D.A.Rayner novel. In the novel, a Carley float has an oar rigged upright with a single bulb atop and left to drift all night to appear as if someone on the DE has carelessly left a porthole or hatch open, creating a tempting target. The following morning shows the submarine captain livid that he has wasted four torpedoes worth "thousands and thousands of marks" on another trick. Of course, this was not included in the movie TEB, and I am wondering if the raft left adrift behind HMS Surprise was from the MAC novel...or lifted from the TEB novel. Is there any mention of the raft decoy in MAC?

[–] ian-onions 14 years ago

O'Brian used the trick in, I think, The Far Side of the World.(Published in 1984) I've read all 20 of the books four times each, I highly recommend them. It seems to me a kind of ruse that may actually have been attempted in naval warfare, and I am intrigued by the thought that O'Brian may have read Rayner's novel, or seen the film-or maybe both authors were referring to the same, real-life incidents?

[–] ex250 14 years ago

The trick is actually in the first book of the series, Master and Commander.

[–] CGSailor 10 years ago

Master and Commander, And The Far Side of the World are two entirely different Novels in the same series. M&C being the 1st and TFSOTW being the 10th Novel.

The Movie is an amalgamation of multiple incidents in several novels but mostly from those two. The scene you are referring to took place in the First novel.

However, as far as "the Enemy Below" goes, neither was lifted from the other.

Both pay tribute to a time honored tactic in Naval Warfare....
DECEPTION.

Even in modern times we still practice what is referred to as "Deceptive lighting" practices. We will alter the lighting of the ship to a different configuration so as to appear (from a distance at least) to be something other than what we are.

You see this to a comedic effect in the film "Down Periscope" when they Surface in a storm, rig a worklight to the raised periscope mast, turn on the running lights, trail a screw,and start singing loudly.

The USS Orlando spotted the lights through the rain and weather, and sonar picked up a single screw on diesel motors and picked up the fishing and concluded they had run down a "Boatload of beered up fishermen"

I myself took part in deceptive lighting when we disguised our Cruiser as a Carrier. Backlit bedsheets look amazingly like the lit up hanger bays way out on the horizon in the darkest of nights on the water where all you got to go by is the lights and no sign of the ship's silhouette.

I joined the Navy to see the world, only to discover the world is 2/3 water!

[–] lwi101 (1) 4 years ago

Well after curfew, but here goes:
Many of the more unbelievable events in the O'Brian series are based on real events. Much of Master and and Commander is based on the exploits of Lord Cochrane, who did defeat the 32 gun ElGamo while commanding the 14 gun HMS Speedy. In his autobiography, Cochrane also claimed to have used the plague "escape" and the raft with top light trick. Cochrane was also accused of stock market fraud later in life, as was Aubrey. O'Brian did a lot of research on British naval history, and put Aubrey on the scene of actual events, especially in the first 10 books Cochrane's autobiography was published somewhere around 1850.