Movies - The Sea Hawk

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	Movies - The Sea Hawk

The Sea Hawk is a 1940 adventure film about an English privateer set in the Elizabethan era, loosely based on the historical figure Sir Francis Drake. While the film bears the same name as the novel The Sea Hawk by Rafael Sabatini, its plot has nothing to do with the novel, and is instead based on a story by Seton I. Miller.

The film was directed by Michael Curtiz and starred Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, and Claude Rains. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction, and featured a score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Plot

The film begins with King Philip II of Spain declaring his intentions to destroy England and after this "puny rockbound island as barren and treacherous as her Queen" is out of the way, he believes that world conquest will follow: "it (a map) will cease to be a map of the world; it will be Spain." He sends one of his courtiers, Don Alvarez, played by Claude Rains, as his ambassador to England to allay suspicions generated by the great armada he is building that he plans to send to invade England.

In England, the Queen is in audience with her ministers where those suspicious of King Philip's armada plead with the Queen to build a fleet, which she hesitates to do in order to spare the purses of her subjects.

Later, the ambassador's ship is attacked en route to England by the Albatross, captained by Errol Flynn's character of Captain Geoffery Thorpe. The ship is taken, and Don Alvarez and his niece are taken aboard and brought to England. The dashing Thorpe is immediately enchanted by Alvarez's niece, Donna Maria, generating the romantic subplot that carries throughout the film, and later returns her jewels that were part of the plunder seized from the Spanish vessel. Her former hard exterior towards him softens as she too begins to fall in love.

Upon reaching England, Don Alvarez is granted an audience before the Queen, who accepts Donna Maria as one of her maids of honour. The Sea Hawks, a group of English privateers who loot Spanish ships for "reparations" appear before the Queen, who scolds them for their piratical attacks and for endangering the peace with Spain. Captain Thorpe finally appears and despite his attack on the ambassador's ship, is instead allowed to proceed with a plan to seize a large caravan of gold in the New World and bring it back to England. The Queen is wary of what an attack on Spain's source of wealth may do, but allows Thorpe to proceed with the plan in any case.

Suspicious of Thorpe's expedition, Lord Wolfingham, one of the Queen's ministers (who is secretly a Spanish loyalist who collaborates with Don Alvarez, and is interested in placing a ruler friendly to Spain on the throne) sends a spy to try to discover where the Albatross is really heading, but to no avail; Lord Wolfingham and the other courtiers are told that Thorpe is heading out on a trading expedition up the Nile River in Egypt, which Wolfingham doubts.

Upon visiting the chartmaker who is crafting the chart for the Albatross' voyage, Don Alvarez and Lord Wolfingham determine that the ship is really heading to the Isthmus of Panama and informs the same Spanish captain whom Thorpe earlier defeated to sail ahead, in order to capture Thorpe and his ship. The Albatross reaches its destination, and part of her crew seizes the caravan. They are secretly led into a well-laid trap; during the ensuing action, the Spanish drive the English crew into the swamps. Thorpe and a few others survive and return to the ship, only to find that it has been captured by the Spanish. Thorpe and crew are returned to Spain, tried by the Inquisition, and sentenced to be chained to the oars of a Spanish galley for the remainder of their natural lives.

In England, Don Alvarez informs the Queen and her maids of Thorpe's fate, causing his niece to faint. The Queen and Don Alvarez exchange heated words, and she orders him out of her court before she orders his arrest. Disgusted, she also orders a portrait of King Philip to be removed from her quarters.

On the Spanish ship he is imprisoned on, Thorpe meets an Englishman named Abbott who was captured in Spain trying to discover evidence that the Armada is intended as an offensive measure rather than for the defense of Spain. Through cunning, the English take the ship during a night attack after freeing themselves from their chains. They board another ship in the same harbor, where an emissary has the secret orders. Thorpe and his fellow men take that ship as well and sail back to England with the plans in hand.

Upon returning to England, Captain Thorpe must reach the Queen with the Spanish plans before it is too late. A carriage bringing Don Alvarez to the ship which unbeknownest to him Thorpe had captured also brings his niece. Don Alvarez boards the ship and is presumeably held prisoner as Captain Thorpe, dressed in the uniform of a Spanish courtier, sneaks into the carriage carrying Donna Maria, who has decided to stay in England in hope that Thorpe may one day return. The two declare their love for each other, noting that his English ancestry and her Spanish ancestry do not matter.

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Movies - The Sea Hawk

Plot

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