“As so often with [C. S.] Forester’s novels, the action takes place against a background of carefully researched historical fact.”[1]  Leaving aside his “Horatio Hornblower” saga, there are four novels by C. S. Forester[2] about naval warfare in the World Wars.  Three have been made into good movies.  One, inexplicably, has not.  The first of them is Brown on Resolution.

            Historically, great sea battles between enemy fleets were a comparative rarity.[3]  More often, the fleets were either blockading enemy ports or being blockaded in port.  If what you’re after is exciting portrayals of human character and military drama, then put your money on lone ships or small squadrons engaged in cruiser warfare or special assignments.  Such was Forester’s knowledge and talent, that he could portray both ends of the spectrum with great skill.[4] 

In 1929, Forester published a novel called Brown on Resolution.  It is set within the historical context of the cruise of the German Far Eastern Squadron at the start of the First World War.  Two cruisers and three light cruisers set out to commit as much “mischief”—in the words of their commander–as they could before being destroyed.  The battles of Coronel (a German victory) and the Falklands (a British victory) followed. 

One cruiser, the “Emden,” had been detached to cruise on its own.  Over the course of two months in the Indian Ocean, it sank more than twenty merchant ships, a French destroyer, and a Russian cruiser.  Then the “Emden” ran for the Pacific with the British hot on its heels.  The British caught up with the “Emden” at Cocos Island and shot it to bits. 

Forester imagines a lone German ship, the “Zeithen,” standing in for the “Emden.”  After sinking a British warship, the German cruiser picks up a few survivors.  Then it seeks an isolated port in which to repair battle damage.  With the “Zeithen” holed up at Resolution Island in the Galapagos, one of the British prisoners, Albert Brown, escapes from the ship armed with a German rifle and ammunition.  He delays the German effort to complete repairs, all the while eluding German search parties.  Brown succeeds in delaying the Germans for a few days.  Brown is killed by a shot from the departing Germans, who emerge from harbor to find British warships licking their chops.  The kicker is that Brown is the illegitimate son of the British commander.

The book was turned into a movie twice, once in 1935 (“Brown on Resolution,” dir. Walter Forde) and then in 1953 (“Sailor of the King,” dir. Roy Boulting).[5]  You can watch the latter at Bing Videos 

            In real life, the captain of the “Emden” had detached men under his First Lieutenant, to destroy a radio station on a neighboring island.  They survived the battle, seized a local schooner, and made a 1,700 mile voyage to meet up with a German supply ship in the Indian Ocean.  Thence, Arabia and overland to Germany.  Yes, there’s a movie: Bing Videos  In German, alas. 

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[1] Brown on Resolution – Wikipedia 

[2] On whom, see: C. S. Forester – Wikipedia  JMO, but Hornblower and the Hotspur is the best of a crowded field. 

[3] Salamis, Lepanto, the scattering of the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway. 

[4] Again JMO, but Patrick O’Brian’s wonderful “Aubrey/Maturin” novels are about all sorts of things other than war at sea, a subject about which the author knew little. 

[5] After the Second World War, a bunch of British studios made movies with greater or lesser American stars as part of the cast.  Probably they thought that this would help them in the American market.  What to do about Americans playing British characters?  Pretend that the character is a Canadian!  Brilliant, so long as everyone is willing to believe that Canadians speak with American accents.  Can’t have been good for British-Canadian relations, eh?