Hornblower: Mutiny

2nd Lieutenant Bush (Paul McGann) was cast in the title role in contemporary Napoleonic Wars television series, Sharpe (1993) however, two weeks into filming of the first episode in Ukraine, McGann injured his knee playing football and was forced to withdraw. When production started again a month later, Sean Bean took over the role that made him famous.

Live action on the quarterdeck or the gundeck in this and further episodes of Hornblower was shot on HMS Victory. Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, ordered in 1758, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765. She is best known for her role as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. Since 1922 she has lain dry dock at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard England, and preserved as a museum ship. She has been the flagship of the First Sea Lord since October 2012 and at 253 years of age is the world's oldest naval ship still in commission.

A real life aspect of life at sea, which the Hornblower films have consistently omitted, was the occasional presence of women on board Royal Navy ships, especially the larger rated ships such as the 74 gun Renown, in which women, usually the wives of the gunner and carpenter who, unlike the common sailors would probably have had separate sleeping quarters, sometimes accompanied their husbands to sea and filled certain on-board domestic roles. While it was not uncommon, the producers rightfully felt that adding this dynamic to the series would have complicated the plot and confused the viewers.

While sentencing Hornblower to a continuous watch, Captain Sawyer's pupils appear to be mismatched (the right one being wider than the left). This is usually an indicator of brain damage, an early sign of the captain's poor mental health and later breakdown.

The part when a sailor falls to his death when captain Sawyer threatens to flog the last man down from working aloft was based on a really incident. On 20 September 1797, Captain Hugh Pigot of the HMS Hermione made the same threat, and three sailors died as consequence. Captain Pigot ordered the bodies thrown to the sea, without further ceremony, with the words "throw the lubbers overboard". Concidentally, there are other similarities between the fictional HMS Renown and the real HMS Hermione: both of the happened at roughly the same period. Also, a midshipman named David Casey was humiliated by Pigot -in this case forcing him to kneel before him-, also, there were lieutenants named Archibald and William, the ship did sail into Spanish waters (where she was retained) and, when recaptured from the Spanish in 1799, the ship was renamed HMS Retaliation (similar to HMS Renown). The final coincidence is that Pigot's practices ultimately led to mutiny, which claimed his life.