The first case of animated reflection of the distant past that I want to present can be seen in the pilot episode of the series The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest which was a sequel of the original show from the ‘60s and its ‘80s renewal, airing for two seasons (summing up a total of 56 episodes). The show was an interesting experiment which presented the adventures of Dr. Benton Quest, a renowned scientist who is equipped with multiple gadgets, has land, air and water vehicles, as well as good connection with the government of the United States of America (USA), his bodyguard and a former ‒ as called by general Tyler in the first season ‒ “Special Operations cowboy”, Race Bannon, and their adolescent children, Jonny Quest, Hadji Singh (natural, respectively adopted son of Dr. Quest) and Jessie (the daughter of Bannon), who find the legendary city of El Dorado (“The Realm of the Condor”), encounter (among others) ghosts, a demon who possesses the body of women (“Eclipse”), an envoy of an advanced outer space civilization who is elected Vice-President of the USA (“Alien in Washington”), werewolves (“In the Darkness of the Moon”), cryptozoological beings like yetis (“Expedition to Khumbu”), the Jersey Devil (“The Specter of the Pine Barrens”) and the wild man of Borneo (“Amok”), and fight notable recurring foes like Dr. Jeremiah Surd (a paralyzed former scientist who came up with a nerve gas) and Ezekiel Rage (the disfigured and vengeful former secret agent left behind in a fictional Central/Southern American country where his family died in a car crash). The show also features a 3D virtual reality simulator called Questworld which can be used both for training, communicating with alien entities and fighting menaces.
(Back in the late 1990s, when I was a child, the series was a great, captivating, intriguing and, sometimes, frightening experience for me.)
(Back in the late 1990s, when I was a child, the series was a great, captivating, intriguing and, sometimes, frightening experience for me.)
Here is the intro of the series:
The pilot of the series (entitled “The Darkest Fathoms”) premiered on August 26, 1996 and presented the story of a haunted pirate ship. It opened with a naval battle between a ship of the line of the British navy and a smaller pirate ship, a frigate, named the “The Ivory Web”. During the intensive gunfight and cannon fire, the pirate commander gives the order “Fire at will.” The deck of the frigate is hit on a spot where a cannon manned by five pirates is on the verge of being fired. The explosion blows the men away and tosses the cannon backwards. The captain runs to the cannon and pushes it back to fire at the other vessel. The picture then cuts to the officers of the other ship who are witness to this scene. One of them, the commander calls upon the pirate leader:
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| Screen shot taken from the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8K-lys_Qps |
-Strike your collars, Black Jack Lee! Surrender your ship!
-Never! Alive or dead, what is mine is mine!-replies the pirate, while the picture first show him, after suddenly closes on his face.
-What you call yours belongs rightly to his Britannic Majesty! You must pay the price for you treason and piracy but, at least spear your crew this carnage!
-What you call yours belongs rightly to his Britannic Majesty! You must pay the price for you treason and piracy but, at least spear your crew this carnage!
After an initial laugh, the pirate captain replies: If you give my men the choice of dying, here, a dancing at the end of your yardarms, Horatio! I believe they will stand fast with me!
After saying this, he ignites the primer quill of the cannon with a match and fires it in the direction of the British officers he is replying to. The cannonball hits the ship, very close to the location of the officers but none of them is visibly injured, although the commander fell to his knees as a result of the impact. He is helped up by his seconds and, in a visibly angry manner, he gives the following instruction: “Order: give no quarter and take no prisoners.”
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| Screen shot taken from the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8K-lys_Qps |
The Ivory Web finally receives three major hits and begins to sink. The frigate tips towards the larger ship with the three masts of the former hitting the deck of the latter. The commander gives order to set it free, turning to his second and saying: “My youth, I will not sink with that murderous villain!” The sailors cut the ship loose and it moves away from the British ship as it begins its stern first descent. The remaining pirates throw themselves into the water, leaving Black Jack Lee the only one to remain on the frigate. As he climbs up towards the prow, the commander asks the rhetoric question: “How could a man with the learning, the record and the courage of Jack Lee become so monstrous, a renegade?”
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| Screen shot taken from the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8K-lys_Qps |
As The Ivory Web flips to vertical position, Black Jack Lee, who is holding on to the bowsprit, declares: “In life or death, no one shall have what is Black Jack Lee’s.” The commander throws an angry gaze at him while the color of his hair and that of his eyebrows turn from grey to white.
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| Screen shot taken from the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8K-lys_Qps |
The person and the life story of the pirate Black Jack Lee (born John Milton Lee), a former aristocrat officer and “once a rising star in the British navy” who was dismissed because of his cruelty and who bought the navy’s ship which he commanded, The Ivory Web, becoming a pirate afterwards, is fictional, although there were some historical personalities who had a similar path of life. One of the best examples is Englishman Francis Verney /1584-1615/ who was born to a noble family (both his half-brother, Edmund /1590 or 1596-1642/ and Edmund’s namesake son /1616-1649/ fought in the English civil war, the former was killed in the battle of Edgehill, while Edmund the younger died in the line of duty as commander of the infantrymen of the defending force at the siege of Drogheda, during the conquest of Ireland by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell /1599-1658/) he left England, after losing a lawsuit against his father’s widow regarding his inheritance of the family fortune, became an adventurer, a mercenary and a corsair of the Barbary Coast.
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| “Nelson English Admiral” A reproduction of Lemuel Francis Abott's oil painting from 1797 from the following Hungarian book: Mangold L., Horváth C. and Ballagi A. (eds.): A legújabb kor. Napóleon kora. Tolnai világtörténelme. [The most recent age. The age of Napoleon. The world history of Tolnai] vol. 15., Budapest, 1929. 90. |
Jack Lee mentions the given name of the superior officer commanding the British ship: Horatio, who is wearing a black eye-patch and has only one arm. Taking this description into account and adding to it that Lee ‒ according to one of the episode’s characters ‒ “died 200 years ago” (which indicates that the above-described fictional event took place sometime in the late 1790s), we can assert that this character is none other than Lord Horatio Nelson /1758-1805/, 1st Viscount Nelson, knight of the Order of the Bath, Rear-Admiral of the British Royal Navy. He is probably best known as the victor of the Battle of the Nile (1-3 August 1798) and the Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) in which he defeated the naval forces of Napoleon Bonaparte /1769-1821/.
This version of Horatio Nelson shows two battle marks which correspond to the injuries he suffered during his service. He was blinded in his right eye after being wounded during the siege of Calvi (12 July 1794) where he fought as part of the British expeditionary force sent to help the Corsicans who rebelled against the Jacobin French government. Three years and 12 days later, he commanded a British squadron with the ordered to land at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, located on the island of Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands. During a nighttime fight, the British troops were met with fierce resistance and the young Rear-Admiral was shot in the arm and was seriously wounded. As a result, his right arm was amputated.
(Personally, I consider it ironical that Nelson, who won two major battles on sea against the French, respectively Franco-Spanish forces of Napoleon, was scared on the island where Napoleon was born and he suffered one of his worst defeats, not to mention being basically crippled during the military operation, on Spanish waters. Beside this, I would also mention the fact that there is a street in Santa Cruz de Tenerife named after him, Calle de Horacio Nelson.)
This cartoon version of Lord Nelson contains three factual errors: 1.) Nelson most probably never wore an eye-patch to conceal his blindness. This error is most probably derived from the 1941 biopic starring future Lord Laurence Olivier /1907-1989/ as the admiral, who wears an eye-patch during the movie, 2.) his eye-patch is on his left eye which is incorrect and 3.) the character appears to be in his mid-50s going on to 60. This is also wrong because Nelson (born in 1758) was only 47 years old at the time of his death. The naval battle takes place in the late 1790s, when he was around 40 or, at best, in his early 40s.
The way he wears the right sleeve of his uniform (tied up to the left side of his chest, as depicted in the above-inserted picture) is presented correctly. Nelson is depicted like this in a number of paintings made by several contemporary artists (William Beechey, Lemuel Francis Abbott, Guy Head).
Conclusion
In the pilot episode (“The Darkest Fathoms”) of the series The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, one can see a cartoon version of British Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson which, although contains three major errors (his eye-patch - which he, most probably, never wore - is on the wrong eye and he is about a decade and a half older than he should have been at the presumable time of the battle), is relatively believable.
DISCLAIMER: The pictures which are featured in the present blog post are all screenshots from the cartoon series. These were made with the aid of the print screen (PrtSc) feature of the laptop. I don’t own the above-mentioned cartoon series and no copyright infringement was intended by using the copies obtained with print screen feature.
