Arizona seems the obvious answer for the warship, but when he specified “merchant ship” I immediately thought of the Exxon Valdez. About as many movies about that ship as of the Maine, though.
For the Arizona, for some reason best known to the demons inside my head I focused on Pearl Harbor rather than Tora Tora Tora. I never thought I would laud the qualities of TTT over another movie, but it has Pearl Harbor beat hands-down. But try as I might, I couldn’t find any connections.
Is there a movie, perhaps, about the Edmund Fitzgerald?
Schoonerbum was thinking in the right direction. I confess I hadn’t thought of Jason Robards (perhaps because my brain had, mercifully, blotted out its memory of “Raise the Titanic”); I guess we’ll have to consider Schoonerbum the winner if nobody comes up with the answer I had in mind. But the latter is, I think, better and more interesting. Let’s wait another day and see if, with the above hints, anybody gets it.
alumni, Exxon Valdez was in a movie by kevin costner called water world. didn’t know it was her til she sank that you see her name on the stern before it went underwater.
The 1934 movie “Here Comes the Navy,” starring the 34-year-old James Cagney, was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but apparently faded from most movie enthusiasts’ memories pretty quickly. It doesn’t even get listed in most “TV movies” books; so far as I know it hasn’t been released on either VHS or DVD. But it has shown up a couple of times in recent years on the Turner Classic Movies cable network - usually late at night or very early in the morning.
Much of the movie was shot on board the U.S.S. Arizona. There are quite a few interesting on board scenes - including one in which, with all the officers wearing their dress uniforms, swords, and fore-and-aft hats, Cagney gets presented with a medal. There’s also a memorable explosion inside a 14" turret. (Paul Stillwell, in his book about the Arizona, suggests that those scenes may have been shot inside a studio mockup of the turret interior - but if so the moviemakers were mighty careful to get it right.)
The plot (such as it is) revolves around a rivalry between Cagney, a young, swaggering sailor, and Pat O’Brian, who plays an older, relatively straight-laced chief petty officer. In the grand finale, the two of them jump out of the airship Macon (which crashed a year after the movie was released), and are saved by one parachute.
The two male leads are also involved in a love triangle, the hypotenuse of which is the 24-year-old Gloria Stuart. Sixty-three years later, she played the old lady with the diamond in “Titanic.”
I found myself thinking I was having great ideas - I moved out from the Tora Tora Tora/Pearl Harbor core to In Harm’s Way and even 1941. And I tried replacing Titanic with Poseidon Adventure. I didn’t find any matches, but I did find that David Warner was in 2 different Titanic movies - Titanic and SOS Titanic; I found a link between the movies Titanic and Tombstone; and ultimately that whoever lists the all the bit players on IMDB.com has WAY too much time on their hands.
I’ve wanted to watch Here Comes the Navy for years, but when it was on last, we did have TiVo but also had a new TV that didn’t get along with TiVo, so I missed out yet again. It’s not available on DVD, but you can go to TCM.com and cast a vote for it - they track the votes by email address, so if you have more than one you can vote more than once.
What is the connection between a New Zealand dog dinner (yes, a tasty, canine main course), Captain Cook (the main course at another dinner?) and Copenhagen (no, not the smokeless tobacco)?
I’ve a famous name that connects Captain Cook and the Battle of Copenhagen (1801), but can’t make the New Zealand culinary connection. Am I on the right lines?
Well, my first thought was William Bligh, who sailed with Cook and commanded HMS Glatton at Copenhagen but, as I said above, I couldn’t connect the dog.
Looking deeper I came up with Edward Riou, who served on both Resolution and Discovery during Cook’s last expedition, ending up as a midshipman
During the voyage Riou acquired a native dog at Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand. The dog apparently bit several of Riou’s colleagues so when Riou was ashore one day the dog was given a mock trial, found guilty, killed and cooked. This was referred to as the “Trial of the Cannibal Dog”.
In 1799, he was given command of HMS Amazon, a new 5th rate of 38 guns. The Amazon joined the Baltic Fleet in 1801 and took part in the Battle of Copenhagen on 2 April 1801. During the battle, Riou was severely wounded in the head by a splinter and then killed when a cannon-ball cut him in two.
Though Nelson only knew Riou by his reputation before the Copenhagen operation, Riou greatly impressed the Admiral during their short association. He performed flawlessly in marking the channels approaching the city and Nelson included the frigate captain in his planning sessions, along with Admirals and Commodores.
Riou became the victim of other officer’s screwups during the battle, ending up facing shore batteries in a frigate. When Hyde Parker lost his nerve and ordered a withdrawal, Riou had no choice to comply, unlike Nelson, who could afford to turn a “blind eye”. In order to withdraw, Riou’s vessels had to cease fire, which lifted their protective cloak of smoke, and turn their sterns to batteries that had not been suppressed. Riou was cut in half by a cannon ball and Amazon’s crew suffered horrendous casualties.
If events at Copenhagen had gone to plan, it might have been “kiss me Riou”…
and an excellent book by Dudley Pope, The Great Gamble, Nelson at Copenhagen.
The dog story, and undertones, can be found in Anne Salmond’s book, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog, The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook’s Encounters in the South Seas"
You got me excited about this one, I live almost within sight of Half Moon Bay, except it turned out to be the wrong Half Moon Bay… on the central California coast.
I think that the Half Moon Bay you are referring to is in Black Rock, Victoria, Australia; which in 1926 was the home of the Black Rock Yacht Club and became the new home of the world’s most celebrated breakwater, HMS Cerberus.
I’m currently building - very intermitently - a 1:48 scale RC model of HMVS (Her Majesty’s Victorian Ship) Cerberus. Launched in 1868, Cerberus was the first of the modern battleships and the first British warship to dispense completely with sail power. The design for the Cerberus was the first in the world to incorporate the combination of a central superstructure with fore and aft gun turrets - and she had the superior “Coles” turret, as opposed to the inefficient Ericsson design used on your side of the pond!
For anyone interested in more info, visit www.cerberus.com.au/ In the meantime, back to you for the next question.
Let this be a lesson to me - I have a biiiig mouth!
I have an hour or so before I have to leave as well - I’ll see if I can come up with a decent question (or not so decent) and put it up here for your consideration.
OK, here is a quickie - I don’t know how well-known the incident is, but I hope it is not too obscure.
World War 2 had just ended in Europe a month before, when a single hand grenade sank one ship, damaged 4 others so severely that they later had to be scrapped; and killed at least 88 people, both British and German.