The Acheron

Modeling Subjects Ships
1

Greetings,

I searched a lot but still cannot find a clear picture of the Master and Commander movie’s french frigate acheron’s figurehead. what I see vaguely in a single caption from my dvd is something like a lion or a dragon. Does someone have a clear picture ?

best wishes

2

You’re going to have trouble getting an answer to this one. As I understand it that ship didn’t exist; the images of it on the screen were entirely generated by computer.

Acheron, in Greek mythology, was (according to the dictionary where I just looked it up) the River of Woe, one of the five rivers of Hades. What that might imply in terms of a figurehead is anybody’s guess.

3

  1. The Acheron of the movie never existed, but description of it in the movie’s dialogue conforms to the American Constitution class 44 gun frigate.

  2. In the original book of the same name, Jack Aubrey and HMS Surprise pursued a ficticious 38 gun American Frigate USS Norfolk halfway around the world until the American ship wrecked in a SouthSea storm.

  3. Historically the British Frigate HMS Phoebe did in fact chase the American 32 gun Frigate USS Essex halfway around the world and then destroy her in a long range gunnery action. It seems likely that the book, and more indirectly the movie, was based on this incident.

  4. Clearly a movie showing the British successfully defeating an American Frigate would not sell well in the United States, so it made sense to change the enemy to the French, whom most Americans could be made to hate with the slightest provocation at any convenient time.

  5. It also makes sense to stack the odds even more dramatically against good guys so as to heighten the drama, thus the opponent not only changed nationality, but was also uprated from a 38 gun, 18pounder frigate to a 44 gun 24 pounder frigate.

  6. But the stretch is not so far fetched. Although Americans idolize the Constitution as the super Frigate unmatchable by another other frigates of the world, in fact that French had been building Frigates superior to the Constitution since the war of 1756, and had a number of 40-50 gun 24 pounder frigates in commission during the Napoleonic war.

4

thank you for clearing it out sir. I also found a photo in HMS Rose webpage. It shows the same beakhead with constitution plus a little platform or something is added right beneath the billet head, on which that lion or dragon is coiled I think.