ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR: MY responsibilities on this show were as a lead set designers and asst. art director. I took the assistant art director title later to allow me to supervise construction as well. I had been the only one to understand how to loft the hulls for the ships. This is a way to draft sections through the ship’s hull to provide the proper profiles to build from. There was no computer aided design back then.
I drafted all the cannons for the movie.
There had been two exterior Surprise ships. One was a sea worthy vessel based off a frigate class training vessel called the Rose. We purchased the Rose from a business that taught square rig sailing to the consumer. It was of the proper scale but the design had to be modified. We basically cut the details above the deck-line: gunnel walls, ships wheel, created an open waist, rebuilt the head details including the bow sprit and figurehead, added gun positions etc… The stern-castle also had to be rebuilt. Its like we kept the chassis on a car stripped the sheet metal and started from scratch. The other Ext Surprise was our gimballed set as seen in other images shown. This ship was fully rigged on the top deck masts and all. Below it did have a gundeck and great cabin.
The gimballed Surprise was built in three sections. Due to the weight limits of the crane the ship was segmented.
On the Surprise I drew the weather deck details and the gundeck. Bill Hiney was responsible for the design to the exterior ship. I did do the lofting as seen in a later panel.
Because of the need to rig the gundeck for Spx and pyrotechnics it was deemed necessary to have this additional Surprise gundeck. We needed a set to bounce back and forth to to allow all the resets needed to get multiple takes. We had three gundecks: one in the Rose one in the gimbal set and this one.
My drafting of the weather deck which was used for this set as well as the Surprise.
The Acheron was mostly my design. I drew most of the drafting. Super frigate class it was a third longer and wider than the Surprise.
An interesting bit of trivia. Notice the camera crane rigs. Technocranes were just not capable of covering such a large set piece at that time.
This is an example of the hull lofting. The metal ribs were fashioned from these patterns.
Bobby Gould our set decorator actually brought in propmakers from Italy to create the set dressing. They were multitalented folks with the ability to fabricate in a multitude of materials. Almost everything had to be made.
For the final boarding of the Acheron from the Surprise the tank ships were able to collide. The Acheron was stationary but the Surprise/Whaler was on a track system.