Directed by Peter Weir, starring James D'Arcy, Paul Bettany, Russell Crowe (add more)
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
If the scene in which Jack Aubrey gives the order "hard a larboard" was indeed a rudder order the face of the compass wouldn't have rotated clockwise. That would mean the ship was actually making a turn to the left. The compass shows a southerly course, rotates clockwise, and eases to show an easterly course. That's a 90 degree turn to port, is it not? ["Larboard" means "port", or left. It's a "rhyming" opposite to "starboard".]
In the scene where the Surprise is being re-fitted after the first encounter with the Acheron, Captain Aubrey tells Mr. Allen, "A week spent crawling through the Brazilian rain forest looking for a new mast won't do." He would not have used "rain forest" in 1805, the term "rain forest" was first coined in 1898 by a German botanist. [See corrections of this kind for 'Troy', 'Pirates of the Carribean' and 'Braveheart'. The film uses contemporary English so modern audiences can understand the dialogue. This is a film convention, not a mistake.]
During Stephen's self-performed surgery, he asks Higgins for the catling. This instrument, a long, sharp, double-edged knife used for amputations, is not what a doctor would have used to make his initial incision and it is not what Higgins hands him in the subsequent shot. [1. They are at sea, so it is very likely that he does not have proper equipment.
2. He is performing surgery on himself which would be a lot different than doing it on someone else.
3. It is made very clear that Higgins is not a doctor.]
In the final DVD scene Jack and Stephen are playing their instruments. Jack is strumming his violin before picking up his bow. The sound of the strumming continues for several seconds after Jack stops and before he starts playing using the bow. [Already listed and corrected.]
Corrected by Twotall
It is highly unlikely that a French privateer would attack a British frigate, even with an advantage in size and armament. Privateers were in the profitable business of capturing enemy merchantmen, not in the dangerous one of fighting enemy warships. The Acheron would only fight the Surprise if forced to. I can't see why the screenwriters made the Acheron a privateer - making her a French warship would have been more realistic and would have detracted nothing from the story. [Just because you think something's unlikely, it doesn't necessarily make it a mistake. While privateers did generally go after merchant vessels, there are numerous recorded examples of them attacking riskier targets - Henry Morgan, for example, successfully attacked heavily fortified towns on at least two occasions during his career, which makes attacking a smaller outgunned warship seems relatively minor. Privateers also had to think about their reputation - a better 'legend' would lead to more prestigious and more profitable assignments, to say nothing of the bragging rights among their fellow captains. If a privateer saw the opportunity to take out an enemy warship in a sneak attack (thus lessening the risk considerably), it's more than plausible that they'd do so.]
Corrected by Tailkinker
Surprise, disguised as a whaler, makes a quick tack (within a minute) so that both sides of the ship can fire broadsides into Acheron. In real life, a square-rigger such as Surprise would take a half-hour or more to turn around, with much effort on the part of the crew to maneuver the sails and spars. [Sailing ships, especially in the Royal Navy with their large crews, can tack and wear in a few minutes. I have sailed aboard the Rose, which was the life size sailing version of Surprise in the movie, and we could tack or wear easily in about five minutes with a much smaller crew than would have been available to Jack Aubrey.]
Dr. Maturin states that the lizards they see at the Galápagos are "vegetarians". This word wasn't introduced until 1847 by the first Vegetarian Society in Ramsgate, England. [As with almost all historical films, modern terms are being used to allow modern audiences to understand easily - the earlier term "Pythagorean" would have meant nothing to them. Standard movie convention, therefore this cannot really be considered a mistake.]
Corrected by Tailkinker
When the Surprise is firing upon the Acheron in the last battle of the film, they completely destroy the main mast as shown in a wide shot of the Acheron's mast falling all the way off. However, when half of Jack's crew take the Acheron under Tom's command in the last 5 minutes of the film, the mast in miraculously back on. This is without them ever stopping to retrieve another mast or having enough time. [Quite a bit of time has gone by since the end of the battle and the parting of the 2 ships, they just did not show the work being done on the two ships to get them repaired. Both ships had a lot of damage to their sides, yet they are fixed before the funerals for the dead. So they may have had time to retrieve the mast and repair it enough to get the ship into port at Valparaso. ]
During the boarding of the Acheron, Capt. Jack Aubrey is wielding two Flintlock Pistols (which can only hold one bullet each). But when the French come out of hiding, Jack fires from his Flintlocks three times in a row without reloading. [In a close action, pistols would not be reloaded but would be used once and dropped. Therefore, officers usually went in with pistols in each hand and one or two spares in their belt. Additionally, they would pick up pistols from fallen sailors and good shots would be handed them by others. It is unclear how many pistols Aubrey carries since he boards the ship with one, later holds two and later fires three.]
After the shot where Aubrey sees Hogg in the lifeboat, Hogg and the whalers climb up the starboard accommodation ladder. The starboard accommodation ladder was used for formal occasions; the larboard ladder when no ceremony was desired. [Since these were obviously shipwrecked sailors, it's more than likely that Captain Aubrey (not to mention the crew of the Surprise) was not about to stand on ceremony in getting these weakened and dehydrated sailors onto the ship.]
A man in the cold Cape Horn waters would lose his senses in less than a minute; he wouldn't be able to swim vigorously. [The length of time people can survive in cold water is an average estimate. That means some succumb quicker while others last longer. There are many reported cold water rescues where some victims survived long beyond all expectations.]
When Stephen is taking measurements of the tortoises, there's a close up of him measuring around one's neck. The tortoise if obviously dead. [Why is taking a measurement from a "Dead" tortise a mistake? Wouldn't it be easier to take measurements from one which is not moving?]
The lights on the Surprise are candle or oil lamps. These would flicker, in the movie they don't flicker at all. They're electric. [They are candle lamps. I have seen the lanterns used on this film being made and the finished product. They are not electric, they are high-quality reproductions that would only flicker if wind got to them but these have coverings.]
In the beginning shot it reads "HMS Surprise, 28 Guns..." On the ship, there are 12 Guns on each side of the gun deck, that equals 24. On the quarterdeck, there are 4 Carronades which is 28, the purposed number. But there are also 2 Bow chasers, which would equal in a 30 Gun ship. There are also 2 Swivels but those don't count. [At the time, the rating of a ship by the number of guns was purely nominal. It indicated the ship's approximate size and strength but a ship could and often did carry a few extra guns especially if the captain was wealthy and could afford to bring his own special cannons. In the Patrick O'Brian books Aubrey has a couple of brass long cannons which he moves from ship to ship and uses as chasers because he thinks they are more accurate.]
In the shot where Capt. Aubrey gives a navigational lesson, he refers to Mr. Williamson's sextant. Actually, it's an octant. [Actually, what the mids are holding are examples of a "Hadley's Quadrant", the half-step in navigational tool evolution between the octant and sextant. Aubrey had a sextant (in the final cut we don't see it) and would probably use 'sextant' as a generic term for intruments of this type.]
One of Aubrey's crew saw the Acheron, a French frigate, when it was under construction in Boston. This was carried over from the book in which the Surprise originally pursues an American frigate. The Americans did not build frigates for the French. [It is never insinuated that the ship was built FOR the French by the Americans. Ships changed owners and nationalities frequently. Wasn't Aubrey's first command a French-built ship?]
Corrected by Ioreth
When Blakeney had boarded the Acheron and shoots his gun, for a very brief second we can see that there is a pause in the camera movement though the soundtrack goes on. [That's your own DVD skipping as it changes chapters, not a movie mistake.]
After launching the decoy "vessel", Capt. Aubrey shouts, "Hard a-larboard", spins the steering wheel to the left, making the ship turn left. But in those days a ship's wheel worked in the opposite way: to turn the ship left you had to spin the wheel to the right, and the correct command would have been "Hard a-starboard." [The order "hard a-larboard" is correct, because if the order was given not to the wheel, but directly to the people below (at the rudder stick), it would be har a-starboard, but the order is given to Barret Bonden at the wheel. It is a rudder order, not at steering order.]
After the initial attack by the Acheron, Aubrey goes down below to see how deep the water is. The guy standing in the water says "2 ft, 6 in." This is a BRITISH ship in the early 1800s! [I don't see the mistake here. If the submitter is saying that some archaic unit would have been used, they should have specified it. If they are saying that metric units would have been used, they could not be more wrong. In the early 1800s, even the French still regularly used their customary units (the metric system wasn't fully adopted until the 1840s), and feet and inches are widely used in Britain to this day.]
Stephen Maturin's cello has a end pin or spike which he rests on the floor while playing. Cellos of that date did not have such spikes, they were cradled between the legs of the player. [The cello may have an end pin on it, but the cello is never shown that low, so we have no idea if it's there or not. Also, Stephen is seen holding it between his legs at the last scene. Even when he lifts it to 'strum' it, you don't see the bottom of it.]
You may also like: Gladiator | Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull | Titanic | Madagascar | Saving Private Ryan
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