Question: (Spoiler)

I think it's Horatio that pushes Sawyer. In both the book and the movie he was acting SO guilty.

Horatio didn't push him, but he wasn't save him either. And that adorable little guilt complex he has makes him feel responsible for it. At least, that's what i got out of it. I think bookverse!horatio might've pushed him, but I just don't think that movieverse!horatio is really capable of it. I just don't think it's possible for him to try and kill a man in cold blood, even though he has killed men in fights before. I have this whole crazy rationalization for this, but it would take me like five hours to type it up so...






"You had horses! What were you thinking!"

Wellard knew who pushed Sawyer. Sawyer himself excluded Kennedy.Leaving Horatio as the guilty shadow.You gotta push a little to get to the top,don't you?

I think the problem with this is that Sawyer says he felt hands on his back. He fell on his back, though, meaning any pressure that would imply a malicious intent would need to come from the front. Hands from behind would imply an attempt at rescue.

Looking at it from an outsider's perspective, while Sawyer is the captain, he's also clearly not acting or thinking properly. He's showing paranoia facing Wellard, who is unarmed, while Sawyer himself is holding two loaded pistols. In his dementia, he continues walking back, apparently scared of Wellard, and falls into the hold.

Believing he's not in condition to lead makes it easy to accept this scenario, however Hobbs and Clive cannot accept that and believe, honestly, that the captain is perfect. It's their duty to believe so; they can't be faulted for this. As such, the captain could not have fallen back as that would have demonstrated a flaw in Sawyer. Therefore, someone needed to have pushed him. One of Nelson's own wouldn't simply stumble into the hold on his back.

It would be a major problem for the crew and the Navy high command to come to grips that Sawyer, captain and one of Nelson's own, was out of his head. Hence, in the name of duty and the service, Captain Sawyer NEEDS to have been pushed even if, in reality, he wasn't.

Least...that's my own humble opinion.

I like your reasoning but I don't agree with all of it!

>>> When Sawyer's lying in his cot, having been taken off the laudanum, his eyes gloss over, and I think he says something along the lines of "I remember...", we see the shadow that loomed over him, and this crossfades into Hornblower's face. There is no other relevance for this shot than to say "Hornblower did it!" to the audience. <<<

Well, the relevance of this shot is to show that immediately after he fell, Sawyer did see that shadowy outline of a conspicuously curly head looming over him. And he probably did come to the conclusion that Hornblower had pushed him because of this fragment of memory. But it doesn't tell us more than that. I actually think that particular image is repeated so often over the course of the episodes that it's far more likely to be a red herring than the truth.


>>> Because when Hobbs is in the spot in the courtroom asked who pushed the captain, he repeats the exact same words Hornblower says to him in that scene, looking him straight in the eye. Hobbs is telling Hornblower that he knows what he did, and that he forgives him. <<<

Again, this is a possible interpretation, but not necessarily the only correct one. Yes, Hobbs quotes Hornblower's very words about the captain having died as a hero, looking him straight in the eye, signaling to Hornblower that they understand each other at last. And obviously Hobbs is holding Hornblower's life in his hands at that point and knows it, and very consciously (and nobly!) makes the decision not to drop it. But the way I read it, it's not so much that Hobbs actually forgives Hornblower for murdering Sawyer (which is what it would have been - a great deal to be asking from Hobbs!), but just that he repays Hornblower for his sympathy and kind words (after Sawyer's death), by not taking advantage of his powers to condemn him. I'm not claiming that this interpretation is the only valid one either, I'm just putting it forward as an alternative to Mad Dog's.


I also don't think that Wellard told Hobbs the truth just before he died, *if* he ever knew the truth himself, which I doubt. He clearly doesn't have a very good memory of what happened himself - remember at some point he even asks Hornblower whether he had "ever done anything and not remembered it afterwards", which means that at this point Wellard thinks it's quite possible that he himself was the culprit without knowing it. But even if he knew the truth, Wellard expresses to both Hornblower and Archie several times that he's very grateful to them for their protection and that he would do anything for them in return. He says as much, literally, that he'd be ready to do everything in his power to save their necks. So I believe that what Wellard is actually telling Hobbs just before his death is that *he* pushed the captain, just like Archie did later, knowing that he would die anyway and trying to take the blame so it wouldn't fall on his two friends.

By the way, I'm taking my conviction that Wellard himself was *not* guilty from the fact that the movie makes everything point to him in such an obvious way (Hobbs's several comments etc.) - clearly red herrings, all of them.



>>> Finally, the dialogue between Archie and Hornblower at the end does not make sense if Hornblower didn't push the captain. Archie refers to what he's doing for Hornblower as 'a gift'. [...] So, since Sawyer was pushed and we know it wasn't Wellard (Sawyer dismissed him straight away) then if Archie confessed it wouldn't be 'a gift'. It would simply be the right thing to do. He is taking responsibility so Hornblower won't die. Pure and simple. <<<

Pure and simple from Archie's point of view, yes, but not pure and simple, objectively speaking. Of course Archie is convinced that Hornblower pushed Sawyer, and that's why he's convinced that he's offering a "gift" to Horatio by taking the blame. But is that proof that it really *is* a gift? The thing is, I don't think Hornblower would have accepted it if he really was guilty himself. Archie's "gift" pains him very much; he very much regrets that Archie had to go to his grave without his good name; and yet he doesn't speak up and own to the deed himself, which I'm sure he would have done if he had been guilty. He couldn't prevent Archie giving his false testimony, but he could have disputed it then and there when they were all gathered in the courtroom, and yet he doesn't. That's very out of character, I think. I can't entirely put the deed itself past Hornblower, much as I would like to, but I really don't think he would have let Archie take the blame if it really was his own.

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