Red Rackham's Treasure
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| Red Rackham's Treasure (Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge) |
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|---|---|
 Cover of the English edition |
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| Publisher | Casterman |
| Date | 1944 |
| Series | The Adventures of Tintin (Les aventures de Tintin) |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Hergé |
| Artist(s) | Hergé |
| Original publication | |
| Published in | Le Soir |
| Date(s) of publication | 19 February 1943 - 23 September 1943 |
| Language | French |
| ISBN | ISBN 2-203-00111-9 |
| Translation | |
| Publisher | Methuen |
| Date | 1959 |
| ISBN | ISBN 1-4052-0623-3 |
| Translator(s) | Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | The Secret of the Unicorn, 1943 |
| Followed by | The Seven Crystal Balls, 1948 |
Red Rackham's Treasure (French: Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge) is the twelfth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. It is a continuation of The Secret of the Unicorn, and is one of very few Tintin books to directly carry on the story of the preceding title. It is notable for the first appearance of the eccentric and deaf but ingenious Professor Cuthbert Calculus. According to Michael Farr's Tintin: The Complete Companion, it is also the best-selling book in the Tintin series.
Contents |
[edit] The storyline
In The Secret of the Unicorn, Tintin and Captain Haddock discovered the location of the Unicorn, a pirate ship which was blown up in the West Indies by Captain Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis Haddock in 1676. After destroying the vessel, Sir Francis fled to a nearby island. Tintin and Captain Haddock believe that the pirate's treasure is in the remains of the sunken Unicorn.
Tintin and the Captain hire the Sirius, a boat under Haddock's command, to search for the said treasure. As the crew prepare for the search, their plans are discovered and publicized by the press, forcing Tintin and Haddock to deal with numerous strangers claiming to be Rackham's descendants and insisting on a share of the treasure. They are quickly driven away by Haddock, whose claim to be the descendant of the man who killed Red Rackham has more weight.
Another petitioner is Professor Cuthbert Calculus, an eccentric and largely deaf inventor who offers the use of a special shark-shaped, electrically powered one-man submarine to help search for the sunken ship without being bothered by the numerous sharks in the area. The treasure hunters turn him down and later set off for the trip.
Before Tintin and the Captain clear the port, their friends, Thomson and Thompson intercept them with orders to join the crew to protect the treasure hunters from the possible threat of Max Bird, a rival treasure hunter who escaped from prison. (Ultimately, Bird is never seen or mentioned again, making him a MacGuffin for getting the detectives on board the ship). Shortly after the departure, Tintin and Haddock discover that Calculus has stowed away on board (in a lifeboat, complete with bedclothes;pillow and blanket stolen from the Thompson twins cabin over which they are shown quarreling; and a tin of biscuits which the ship's cook had blamed Snowy for swiping from the galley). The professor has stashed the unassembled parts of his submarine in the hold--removing the Captain's crates of whisky in the process. Despite initially threatening to throw Calculus into the hold on bread and water, Haddock grudgingly decides to keep him along for the trip.
Although it is never directly stated in the book, the coordinates given in the parchment place the island in the Caribbean, to the north of Hispaniola. Initially, the party cannot find anything at the coordinates (20°37′42″N 70°52′15″W / 20.62833°N 70.87083°W), but then Tintin hypothesizes that Sir Francis Haddock used a Paris meridian instead of the Greenwich one (which would yield 20°37′42″N 68°32′1″W / 20.62833°N 68.53361°W). Sure enough, the ship reaches an unknown and uninhabited island, where Tintin and his friends believe the treasure to be buried. As they come ashore to explore it, the Captain stubs his toe on a piece of wood protruding from the sand, which is excavated and turns out to be the remains of Sir Francis Haddock's rowboat. As they penetrate into the interior of the island, they encounter numerous skulls, which Tintin deduces are the remains of the island's cannibalistic former inhabitants. There is also a magnificent pagan icon of Sir Francis, and numerous parrots that repeat the Haddockian argot, which an amused Tintin realizes has been passed down for generations.
Calculus's submarine proves useful in searching for the sunken Unicorn, while the actual examination of the wreck itself is performed with a hardhat diving suit. The Thompson twins soon begin to rue their decision to join the treasure-hunt, because they are consigned to manning the gigantic air pumps supplying the diving suit when Tintin, and later the Captain, explore the wreck. While facing complications like shark attacks, they discover a gold bejeweled cross, a strongbox of old documents, the figurehead of the ship and, to Captain Haddock's delight, a large supply of vintage Jamaican rum.
Although the search is otherwise unproductive, the crew spots a large wooden cross on the island itself and Tintin believes that the reference in their map to "under the Eagle's cross" could refer to it as the marker for the treasure's location in Sir Francis's calendar etchings. Upon coming to the cross the party begins to dig, but after a while, Tintin realizes that they are following a false lead, considering that Sir Francis would not deliberately leave his treasure on an island he did not intend to return to, and they return to the Sirius.
Time passes. Although there are further dives to the wreck, they are unable to find the treasure itself and they go home disappointed. Upon disembarking, the Captain is accosted by a reporter. In retribution for the unwanted attention brought earlier by the press to their expedition, Haddock impishly refers him to "my secretary, Mr. Calculus," whom the reporter tries to interview in vain.
Once home, Calculus's further examination of the parchment documents in the chest that they retrieved allows him to determine that Captain Haddock is heir to the large estate of Marlinspike Hall. Upon this discovery, Tintin insists that Haddock must purchase the estate (which is up for auction), but the Captain declines, noting that he is short on funds due to the wasted expense of their failed treasure hunt. However, Calculus, who has received large sums of money from the government after a profitable sale of his submarine design, overcomes that difficulty in gratitude for a successful test run.
After purchasing the Hall, Tintin and Captain Haddock explore the cellars of the main house. Amongst the cluttered antiques left by the malevolent Bird Brothers (the former owners), they find a statue of Saint John and Tintin remembers that he is called "The Eagle of Patmos" (the island where he was exiled to) and is often depicted with that bird.
The statue is holding a globe, and Tintin finds the location of the island where Sir Francis Haddock was exiled. He accidentally discovers it to be a trigger button to open the globe. The treasure was hidden inside the globe — and the statue was holding a cross above it, just as the map indicated.
[edit] Publication history
The story was originally published as a daily strip in the newspaper Le Soir between the 19th of February and 23rd of September 1943 under the title "Aventures Extraordinaires de Tintin et Milou" (French for "Extraordinary Adventures of Tintin and Snowy"). It was published in book form in 1944 and translated into English in 1959.
By the time Red Rackham's Treasure had finished appearing in Le Soir, Tintin's next adventure, The Seven Crystal Balls, was not yet ready for publication. Crime writer Paul Kinnet came up with a storyline which starred the Thompsons and had them investigate the disappearance of their farmer friend, on whose farm they can be seen working in much the same way as they did on the Sirius.[1]
[edit] Inspirations
The Sirius, which had appeared before in The Shooting Star, was named after the SS Sirius, the first ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean solely under steam power, but was based on another ship called the John-o.88.[1]
[edit] Differences between newspaper strip and comic book
In order to fit into the 62-pages required by the book publishers, certain scenes of the original strip were edited out and some panels were cropped or made bigger.
The speech bubbles and the fonts were made smaller and there were some changes in the text which, in some cases, toned down the aggression of the characters: in the original strip, when confronting the so-called descendants of Red Rackham, Haddock announces that he fancies killing them all in combat and, once they have fled, Tintin expresses satisfaction. In the book Haddock's words are changed to his claiming to feel the boiling blood of his ancestor, Sir Francis, and Tintin makes no comment on his methods.[1]
In the newspaper strip, the sailor caps worn by the Thompsons displayed the name "Redoutable" (French for "Ruthless"). These were taken out in the book version.[1]
Scenes from the strip that did not appear in the book edition included:
- the shopkeeper warning Haddock that breaking the mirror is a bad omen and that he should give up his plans;
- in the port scene, Snowy's tail is hit by Haddock's match after the Captain's finger catches fire. Haddock then turns to Thompson and makes his statement that he is afraid of nothing and that they sail at dawn;
- Haddock, examining one of the steel plates in the hold, comments that it wasn't a bomb after all when a sudden bang can be heard behind them. However it's just the door closing suddenly;
- when digging at the foot of the cross, Thompson finds what he thinks is the treasure, a silver button, only for Haddock to tell him that it's just a button from Sir Francis' clothing and calling him a "freshwater sailor";
- before dragging Calculus off to see Haddock about the Marlinspike parchment, Tintin calls the Captain who mutter: "Calculus?... that phenomenon can go westwards", a reference to the professor's insistence that the treasure is westwards, as per his pendulum.[1]
Scenes that were drawn for the book edition included:
- Haddock being helped to his feet by Thompson and Tintin after going through Calculus' clothes-brushing machine;
- Tintin commenting on the irony of finding the treasure in Marlinspike Hall "right under our very noses" after going halfway across the world to find it.[1]
Some of the panels were redrawn for the book edition in order to cover half-a-page rather than a small panel. These included:
- the scene where Tintin, in his diving-gear, first approaches the Unicorn;
- the scene in the Maritime Gallery at Marlinspike, redrawn to include Snowy chewing a bone, an anchor and the three models of the Unicorn on a glass panel with a book and some of the parchments (the original panel only had a single model on a wooden case).[1]
[edit] Translation differences
A joke in the book involves Thomson and Thompson re-doing Captain Haddock's navigational calculations, but their ignorance causes them to place the ship in a fanciful location far from its real one. In the original French version, Captain Haddock says that their calculations place them in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Methuen English translation alters this to Westminster Abbey, London; the Golden Press translation alters it to St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.
When making their way back to the ship with the idol of Sir Francis, Haddock, his hand trailing in the water, recites the opening lines of "The Galley of Count Arnaldos" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In the original French, he quotes from Alphonse de Lamartine's "Le Lac" ("The Lake").[1]
[edit] In other media
The shark-like submarine was to play an important part in the film Tintin and the Lake of Sharks.
[edit] Influence
The shark-shaped submarine on the book's cover was the inspiration for "Troy," the real-life shark-shaped submersible constructed by aquatic film-maker and oceanographic explorer Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau.[1]
In the movie Kramer vs. Kramer, Dustin Hoffman's character reads this book to his son.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Red Rackham's Treasure at Tintinologist.org
