Fic Commentary

[owl]

DVD-style commentary for A Distant Sound of Cannon, for rodlox, as requested here.

This fic is what happens when you watch PotC after reading the entire Patrick O'Brian and Hornblower oeuvres. The sailing terms are all real, and as right as I could make them.
I conceived a deep love and sympathy for Norrington some time in the last third of the film, and I just about melted when he stood aside for Elizabeth to marry Will. The writers have said online that Norrington is what you get if you put Horatio Hornblower into someone else's story, and I love Hornblower too, so that made me love Norrington all the more. I cried in the cinema when he died *sob* during the final film, and I'm rather cross about that still.

A Distant Sound of Cannon

I actually wanted to call this A Far-Off Sound of Cannon originally, but ff.net is very picky about punctuation in its titles (ie, none allowed). Ah, well.

His Majesty's ship Dauntless, running down before the trade wind to join the West Indian Squadron, was exactly as she should be at eight bells in the morning watch: her decks newly scrubbed, her sails expertly trimmed and a proper night's run on her log board. Her second lieutenant, James Norrington, gave a satisfied nod as, after handing over the watch to the master, he made his way from the deck to the wardroom. The wind was fresh and the sun bright and all was well with his ship.

 

Norrington is tidy-minded. Translation of the naval talk: it's 8 AM, the ship is sailing with the wind behind her, and the wardroom is where the officers eat and live. Second lieutenant is not Norrington's official title; it means he's the lieutenant on that ship with the most seniority (time in that rank), apart from the first lieutentant. I'm also quite pleased that I remembered that it's His Majesty's Ship at this date.

Norrington's satisfaction was slightly tarnished when he reached the wardroom to see a small figure in a miniature long-waisted blue gown. In Norrington's opinion, passengers should remain in their cabins (cabins belonging to two of Dauntless's junior lieutenants, currently berthing, very uncomfortably, with the midshipmen)

Even a ship-of-the-line doesn't exactly have a lot of living space.

and not go foraging on their own account. Dauntless was a King's ship and not a passenger ferry, after all. But Miss Elizabeth Swann roamed over Dauntless at will, from taffrail to bowsprit. Three days ago Norrington had found her eight feet from the deck the weather mainshrouds along with a couple of young midshipmen. Norrington had been on the point of having them whipped for leading her into danger, but the child had insisted that it was entirely her fault. Norrington grinned inwardly at the memory.

Elizabeth is a terrible tomboy, even at this stage. Oh, and I'm sticking with historical usage; they call the ship Dauntless, not the Dauntless.

"Good morning, Miss Swann," he said, sitting down beside Marlow, the first lieutenant. "You are awake and about promptly today."

Elizabeth Swann hitched herself on to the table, letting her legs and skirts swing with the regular motion of the ship.

I like this image, Elizabeth in the 'high-waisted blue gown' with her feet dangling off the deck.

"My father is not," she said. "I think he dined too well with the captain last night."

Marlow snorted with laughter, and flickered a blond eyebrow at Norrington. "Does he know where you are?" he asked, rapping his biscuit on the table.

Marlow is tapping the biscuit to encourage any weevils in it to leave before he eats it. He's also a sort of cameo from another (very obscure) fandom; he's an OC ancestor of the characters in Antonia Forest's Marlow books.

"No," said Elizabeth composedly. Norrington wondered briefly how good a governor Swann would make, given that he could barely keep control of one ten-year-old woman-child.

"Can I help you to anything, Miss Swann?" Marlow asked gallantly.

"An egg, if you please, Lieutentant Marlow. I don't want weevily bread."

"When you've been at sea for six months at a stretch, Miss Swann, you would be glad of the weevils for the sake of their meat," put in Cameron, the third lieutenant.

The weevil thing comes out again.

"Truly?" she asked, dark eyes as round as pennies.

"Mr Cameron is prone to exaggeration," Norrington said drily. Cameron grinned unrepentantly, and Elizabeth shook her curly head at him reproachfully.

It was that candid friendliness, Norrington thought, that had made the child free of the ship. She extended the same camaraderie to everyone from the captain to the cabin boys, much to her father's despair.

Elizabeth and her egalitarian ways. It's historically inaccurate, but it's canon.

And it had effects; the captain had her to breakfast at his table and let her sit in his hammock chair in the stern gallery; the surgeon gave her sweetmeats from his private stock; Cameron had demonstrated to her how to lay and aim the nine-pounder bowchaser on the day the captain had ordered gunnery drills; the younger midshipmen cherished a precocious passion for her.

Nine-pound bowchasers are light guns at the front—bow—of the ship; most of the gun battery was along the ships' sides, pointing outwards, so they were vulnerable from the bows and stern. The stern gallery is a sort of balcony at the back of the ship, opening off the captain's cabin and private for his use. There's nothing squicky about the younger midshipmen crushing on Elizabeth—she's about 10, and it was common for boys to go to sea aged 10-13, and sometimes even younger.

Even Norrington, despite his views on passengers, was aware of a growing affection for the girl. To justify it he cited to himself her intelligence, the courage that was almost to the point of recklessness, the observant disposition that led Elizabeth to learn as much about rigging and seamanship in a month as most people would in a year. Such a shame she wasn't born a boy, Norrington thought. I would trade her for half our mids in a heartbeat.

Yeah, Norrington's sexist. Man of his times. Shame she isn't a boy is a little piece of irony on my part, considering later developments. I think it's in-character for him that he has to justify to himself why he likes Elizabeth. He does the same thing when he's proposing to her; not exactly the way to win a girl's heart. He does love her, he's just terrible at expressing himself, poor thing.

Marlow was giving a gloomy estimate of how many men they were likely to lose in the West Indies. "Poisonous spiders, yellow jack, smallpox..."

The West Indies were notoriously unhealthy for Europeans. Yellow jack is the slang name for yellow fever, which was common in the Caribbean in the 18^th century.

"Assuming, sir, we don't lose a boatload or two in a pirate skirmish before we even reach the station," mumbled Cameron behind his plate.

Little Elizabeth had been listening with attention. "Really truly pirates?" she asked suspiciously.

"On my word of honour," Cameron said. "The bloodthirsty scourge of the Caribbean."

Elizabeth squeaked; Norrington glanced up and said, "Mr Cameron, have you nothing better to do than frighten little girls?"

"Oh, I'm not frightened, I am fascinated!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "What would happen if Dauntless met a pirate?"

Of course she's not frightened. :)

"They would run, rather than face as many guns as we have," said Norrington. "An undisciplined crew won't stand up to a broadside." He glanced at Elizabeth. "If we cleared away for action, our passengers–you and your father–would be sent down to the cable tier to be safe."

Several hundred pounds of iron flying past your head at speeds of a hundred metres per second would make most people run away, yes. The cable tier is down in the hold where the cables for the anchors were stored. It was below the waterline, and therefore any occupants would be safe unless the ship sank or caught fire.

"Along with the rats," Cameron put in gruesomely.

"Ugh!" Elizabeth shuddered. Norrington noted that rats were evidently more to be dreaded than pirates.

"We could give you a swab or a piece of plank to beat them off," Cameron continues, seeming determined to scare Elizabeth after her earlier assertion.

"I would rather fight than be sent down in the dark among the rats," she declared. Norrington grinned; he felt similarly.

"Did you ever fight pirates, Lieutenant Norrington?"

"Several times, Miss Swann. Could I trouble you for the ham, Mr Marlow?"

I rather like this line, with Norrington's understatement. It's also more 18^th century than Pass the ham, please.

"Tell me, if you please," Elizabeth said.

"I fear I should make but a poor job of it, Miss Swann."

"Do you not number storytelling among your skills as an aspiring young officer?" Marlow inquired blandly, handing over the ham. In another senior officer it might have been a snub, but Norrington had served with Marlow a long time, and he took the remark in the spirit it was meant.

"'Tis not one of the Navy's requisites for its young gentlemen, sir."

Norrington unbends! 'Young gentlemen' were the boys who were serving as midshipmen etc before they were commissioned as lieutenants. They were supposed to receive an education that included more than 'point the sharp end where you want to go'.

"Does that mean you will not tell me about the pirates?" asked Elizabeth.

"Miss Elizabeth must have blood and gunpowder, I see," remarked Marlow. "Humour the child, Norrington, do, before she has us all driven distracted."

"Aye aye, sir," said Norrington, a touch sardonically. He glanced at Elizabeth, now leaning against the table by his side.

"The first pirate I saw," he began, swallowing a morsel of ham, "was out in the East Indies, when I was a midshipman not so very much older than you are now, Miss Swann, sailing in a 32-gun frigate. The admiral on the station got to hear of various acts of piracy committed by, rumour went, a couple of crews, Spaniards, Lascars, a mixed lot like that. Those East Indiamen make rich prizes, and with two pirates working together in fast craft they must have been getting rather wealthy."

East Indiamen were ships owned by the Honourable East India Company. A fictionalised version will appear in the two sequel films as the new bad guys. Their ships commonly carried guns themselves, and in wartime would have sailed in convoy with a Royal Navy escort. They carried very valuable cargoes.

Marlow chuckled, and Norrington took a mouthful of coffee. "So we were given orders, along with the rest of the squadron, to hunt down these pirates and destroy them on sight. Sink 'em, burn 'em or take 'em as prizes, the admiral didn't care. Our crew, therefore, was keeping a weather eye open, especially the younger or more excitable members."

"Were you excitable, sir?" Elizabeth asked; the irrepressible Cameron murmured, "I wouldn't credit it."

"Enough so to take my glass up into the shrouds with me instead of skylarking, one afternoon watch. By the way, Miss Swann, I trust that your feet have remained firmly on the deck of late." Norrington fixed Elizabeth with a firm gaze, which she returned frankly.

Shrouds are the part of the rigging going from the mastheads to the ship's side, the ones that look like ladders. Skylarking is climbing about the rigging for fun, or more generally messing about.

"Of course, Lieutenant."

"As it happened, I was looking in the wrong direction to see the pirates. The masthead lookout hailed the deck to report two sails to leeward on the starboard beam. We had them just where we wanted them; with a lee shore on one hand, us to windward, and, thought they did not know it, one of our frigates close to the coast to the north of them."

Leeward means downwind. The ship to windward in a battle or chase will have the advantage in manoeuvring. A lee shore means that the wind is blowing you towards the land, not desirable at all. The idea is that the pirates were keeping close to their base, only venturing out to wherever the sailing track of the Indiamen was.

He made a diagram of the positions out of the cutlery. The other wardroom officers were paying almost as close attention as Elizabeth Swann, he noticed with some annoyance. Norrington disliked speaking of his own achievements, lest it seem he were boasting, but surely the tale of an adventure as a mere irresponsible midshipman would be exempt from this charge.

Poor self-conscious Norrington! Oh, and people in Patrick O'Brian's books are always making diagrams out of the crockery to illustrate their sea stories. Reading this thing, I'm sure you can see why.

"As soon as we heard the hail, every eye on the ship was searching that horizon, even those on the deck, where they could not possibly see the strange sails yet."

Norrington took a swig of his cooling coffee, remembering suddenly the physical sensations of that moment, long ago and far off: the ratlines biting into feet and knees, the precious telescope–bought from a master's mate who was permanently in need of cash–bumping about his neck on a piece of lanyard, the white decks and vivid sea reeling far below, and on the horizon, those twin smudges that might be clouds, might be the topsails of a pair of hostile ships.

I like this image: the tropical sea and the well-scrubbed deck far below, and little Norrington hurrying down the rigging to his station as fast as he could go. Ratlines are the horizontal ropes that cross the shrouds—the rungs of the ladder. Note that they aren't biting into his hands; you hold on to the verticals, the shrouds themselves, I assume so that the person above you doesn't tread on your hands. Lanyard is cord used to secure an object to something, often a person. (The number of terms sailors have for rope…) A master's mate is a warrant (non-commissioned) officer who assists the sailing master. It was used as a stepping-stone on the way from midshipman proper to lieutenant, although this might be a little early for this, depending on when PotC is actually set. Oh, well, given the canon's historical accuracy…

"The captain came up from his cabin on hearing the news, took one look and ordered hands about ship. Let's make us the saltcellar, and the nearer pirate the mustard. We had the wind on our quarter now, our best point of sailing.

Hands about ship means getting all the crew to adjust the sails to turn the ship. The wind on our quarter means that the wind was coming from an angle between right angles and directly behind. As Norrington says, the ship will sail faster with the wind in this direction than it will it it was directly behind, counter-intuitive though it may seem at first.

Within two hours we were in gunshot range of one of them. We had long since beaten to quarters, of course, and we had a pair of long nines as bowchasers, the same as Dauntless. Unfortunately they carried sternchasers of the same calibre. So we ran on, firing at each other. They shot away our jib-boom and part of the beakhead, holed the headsails and the foretopsail stu'nsail , but we hulled them a couple of times 'twixt wind and water, and the more she settled the slower she moved."

Beating to quarters means sending the hands to battle stations. A drum is usually involved, hence beating. Bowchasers and sternchasers, the guns pointing fore and aft. They can't turn sideways on to get the big guns of the broadside to bear without losing ground in the chase. These pirates have pretty good aim, which must have been why they were such a threat. Jib-boom is the spar that sticks out at the bow, an extension of the bowsprit, the beakhead is that curly-looking thing which is the foremost part of the hull, headsails are the triangular ones carried in front of the foremast, and foretopsail stu'nsail (or studdingsail) is a sail carried at to the side of the foretopsail (second up from the bottom on the foremost mast), used for extra speed. 'Twixt wind and water' means just about or above the waterline. Phew. That's the worst of the sailing terminology over with.

"What happened then?" Elizabeth asked.

"All on a sudden, we saw the pirate stop almost dead in the water, like a cart hitting a stone, and her masts went by the board. She'd run on to an uncharted reef, close into the shore."

Ouch time!

"Ooh," said Elizabeth, and the other officers made appropriate noises.

"She slipped off the reef, sank by the head and went down with all hands," Norrington concluded. The wardroom expressed satisfaction.

Sank by the head means went down nose first, like the Titanic.

"Didn't you save anyone?" Elizabeth asked.

"Of course not," said Marlow. "They were pirates. No quarter given, none expected. What happened to the other pirate vessel, Norrington?"

No sympathy given to the pirates by the Navy.

"She met the other frigate when she was running for her bolthole on the coast, and was carried by boarding."

Less spectacular than sinking, but just as effective.

"Were there many casualties, sir?" Cameron asked.

"We lost a midshipman and two hands. I can't remember how many there were on the other frigate, I am afraid."

I think Norrington would think it was important to remember.

"Were they your friends, Lieutenant Norrington?" Elizabeth Swann, of course. None of his fellow officers would have asked that question.

"Yes, Miss Swann, the midshipman was a close friend of mine," he said grimly, restoring the cutlery to its proper positions. For a moment he remembered Richard Arundel. And there had been others who had died at the hands of pirates.

If it had anything to do with James Norrington, the pirates of the Caribbean were in difficulties.

Little does he know, poor boy!

Comments

[rodlox.livejournal.com]

this - is - terrific!
*I am in awe*

[owl]

Thank you! In awe of what in particular?

[rodlox.livejournal.com]

I'm in awe of the whole thing. the historical details, the attention to detail, the looks at the characters' minds, the reconciling of Miss Swann's attitude to the era...

*I am in awe*

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's what a DVD-style commentary is supposed to look like. I was slightly worried that if I borrowed the meme I'd have to do Lawrie and Rowan asking each other to pass the peanuts or something, and it would all have looked like some even more solipsistic than usual version of those ghastly posts where people rope in Remus Lupin and Severus Snape to MST3K someone else's Suefic.

I am so impressed that you know all this stuff. Are there any other evocative deck names besides the cable tier? (I know there's the orlop, but possibly that's out of period)

Anyway. Could you do me the fifth chapter of Rebel Heart please? The one with the destruction of Alderaan?

[owl]

Well, I assumed that I'd be taking the writer/director's part, seeing as there are no actual actors in written fic.

I am so impressed that you know all this stuff.

*is impressive*

Let's see, poop, quarterdeck, spar deck, fo'c'sle, gun deck, hold, orlop would be another platform in the hold like the cable tier.

Could you do me the fifth chapter of Rebel Heart please?

Yep! Will get to it...at some point this week.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Thank you also for pointing me at this fic - I don't normally read in the PotC fandom, but I do love Norrington, yours and the canon one.

Very Impressed

[hm-yrie.livejournal.com]

I'm extremely impressed at your vast knowledge of sailing and naval history, etc. Extremely impressed. Did you do all that research just for this fic or is naval history a hobby?

Re: Very Impressed

[owl]

Thank you! Like I'd remember enough to explain all this three years down the line if I'd just swotted it up for the fic. No, naval history's been a hobby since I was little.