Odd coincidence

The main thing I remember about this movie is being constantly thrown by the piratical villain's names: his real name is John Merrick, the name erroneously attributed to the "Elephant Man" (actually named Joseph Merrick) by Sir Frederick Treves, the doctor who treated him and years later wrote the first published account of his life and pathology, as well as by later authors who made the mistake of relying on Treves rather than other contemporary records and thus repeated the error.

That alone wouldn't mean much -- John is, of course, one of the commonest given names for Englishmen, then and now, while Merrick is by no means an unusual surname. However, the coincidence doesn't end there: the Royal Navy officer the pirate Merrick murders in the film's opening scene, then impersonates in order to gain the first mate's berth on Haakon's ship, is named Michael Howell. That also happens to be the name of the co-author (with Peter Ford) of <i>The True History of the Elephant Man</i>, the first biography of Joseph Merrick to get his name right, and correct other errors in Treves' recollections (which were written many years after Merrick's death) through an exhaustive review of letters, hospital records, and other papers associated with Merrick and written during his lifetime.