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Sea Warriors - The Royal Navy in the Age of Sail,
is a lively new Documentary-film about the Royal Navy of Nelson’s time. Filmed entirely on locations in England - from the northeast coast to London to the shores of Devon and Cornwall - Sea Warriors captures the essence of eighteenth-century life at sea and ashore, as interpreted by today’s leading British authors in sea fiction and naval history.
While director Peter Weir has created a much anticipated adaptation of Patrick O’Brian’s novels for the silver screen in Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World, Dallas-based film maker Chip Richie has filmed a crack documentary on the age of fighting sail. Far from being a static presentation of ‘talking heads,’ Richie takes the viewer with him to maritime England.
“I'd been mulling this idea over for years while I read and enjoyed books by Patrick O’Brian, Alexander Kent, Richard Woodman, Dudley Pope and others,” says Richie, “I wanted to bring to life the reality of what life was like in Nelson’s Navy.”
And at this he has succeeded.
Hosted by Richard Woodman - historian and author of the Nathaniel Drinkwater novels - viewers walk the decks and climb the rigging of one of the few remaining early nineteenth-century frigates, HMS Trincomalee, as well as Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory. Richie also gained access to the storied boardroom of the ancient Admiralty in Whitehall, London, with its famous wind-vane, which alerted the Lords of the Admiralty when a west wind blew that could favor the French.
Perhaps most alluring about Sea Warriors are the segments featuring seldom-seen authors Douglas Reeman, Julian Stockwin, and Woodman, as they express their passion for Britain’s naval history and its place in their novels. These men carry the legacy of Captain Frederick Marryat, who served under Thomas Cochrane as a midshipman, and invented the nautical fiction genre in the nineteenth century, relying upon his own experiences at sea in the Royal Navy.
“All of the sea novelists have done their research,” says Robert Gardiner, naval historian, a view expressed by others, including his colleagues, Colin White and Tom Pocock. Gardiner is on site at a Chatham Historic Dockyard, while White is aboard Victory, and Pocock is seen on the green at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
Douglas Reeman, who writes the Richard Bolitho novels under his pen name Alexander Kent, offers his thoughts from Blue Posts, his home in Surrey. Julian Stockwin, author of the Thomas Kydd novels, speaks from Guildford in Surrey and on board HMS Endeavour at Falmouth. Woodman is seen in various places, from Trincomalee to Bucklers Hard, and even inside a copper-clad powder magazine.
Re-enactors costumed in authentic eighteenth-century clothing demonstrate what life was like between England’s ‘wooden walls’ as well as ashore, where the dreaded press gangs sought unsuspecting men to fill out ship’s companies. The theory behind naval gunnery, personal weapons, medical treatments, and the victuals provided Jack Tars are expressed in a beguiling manner. And the scents of sea, powder smoke, tar and canvas are most palpable.
This splendid film is the essential companion video to the collection of those who ‘go down to the sea’ through the words of Kent, O’Brian, Pope, Stockwin, Woodman and others.
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