Tintin Forums

The other day my brother was reading 'The Red Sea Sharks' and he asked me if I knew why the fire started on board the Ramona. I said that I thought that maybe Allan thought it was a good way to do away with Captain Haddock and Tintin for good, as they might be able to escape from Wadesda unharmed. My brother pointed out, though, that Captain Haddock's and Tintin's lives were not worth a whole ship and its cargo, and it would have been easier for Allan just to shoot them and throw them into the sea. I think that maybe it was a convenient accident that caused the fire, and Allan left Haddock, Tintin and Skut on board to die. So what does everyone think of this? Did Allan start the fire, or was it just an accident?

It was an accident (although what kind of an accident starts a fire on a deck, what on earth they were stocking there?). Allan and his crew are afraid that Ramona will explode as there's explosives on the ship, hence they are escaping. I suppose the explosives must be going to Wadesdah?

The ability and leadership of Allan can be easily questioned during that sequence, it doesn't seem that difficult to extinguish the fire (well, everything is always easy when you're as capable as Tintin and Haddock are). And Allan and his men spent some time boarding the life boat, how much easier it would have been to put out the fire ten minutes earlier, with plenty of men available for the job?

The fire probably started through an accident. Allan did not have the courage to extinguish it and thus he and his men abandoned the ship, because everybody knows that lives are far more important than all the valuable cargo on board. By the way allan also knew that the fire had its advantages-it would finish of tintin and haddock forever!

I have always thought that the fire was started deliberately, given Allans reaction when he realises that the fire has gone out and tries in vain to get back to the ship.
Also, Captain Haddock manages to get the engines going again once the fire is out so presumable the crew must have stopped them before they left the ship (if there is an accidental fire and the ship is full of explosives why bother to stop the engines before abandoning ship?)
And the cost of the ship wouldn't be a factor if Rastapopoulos was involved, I'm sure he would buy Allan the QE2 if there was a chance of getting rid of Tintin.

I think the fire is certainly meant to be an accident for the reasons given by others above: there would be much simpler and less costly/risky ways of bumping off Tintin and Haddock if that was what Rastapopoulos wanted to be done.

As Mondrian says, it is a bit unconvincing that a) the cause of the fire isn't explained and b) that Allan prefers to take to the sea in an open lifeboat rather than simply have the fire put out. But I suppose Allan is shown to be a bit of a useless panicker when it comes to a crisis, in spite of his swaggering manner when things are going his way. We see some more instances of this character trait in Flight 714 of course.

Above all, I think the fire is a plot device on the part of Hergé, in order to get rid of Allan and his men, so that Tintin, Haddock, Skut and the freed Africans can take over the Ramona for the final sea battle with the U-boat. It is a bit of a coincidence that a fire breaks out at such a convenient moment in the story, and it's the second time in this book where a completely accidental transport fire just happens to have worked in Tintin and Haddock's favour (the other being the DC-3's engine fire which prevents the plane from being in mid-air when the bomb goes off).

By this stage in the Tintin series you kind of expect plot events to have more logical causes. Unlikely and unexplained coincidental plot devices are more common in the earlier books, or at least are more glaringly obvious. But The Red Sea Sharks is so tightly plotted and realistic in other respects, and so fast paced, that I don't think think the reader even notices that bits of the plot rely on coincidences so much.

In any case, I suppose the very first page of The Red Sea Sharks does establish that this is to be a story of unlikely coincidences, so maybe Hergé had consciously decided not to worry about using them. Maybe the entire storyline is meant to be being controlled from above by Haddock's guardian angel! (Rastapopoulos wearing that Lucifer costume someow adds to that theme.)

Ok, but how many people knew that Tintin, Haddock and Skut had left the cruise ship and boarded the Ramona? Castafiore for one. And if the Ramona is involved in an accident which results in it exploding, then as far as people are concerned it's a tragic accident. Much easier to explain away than if they were killed on board and dumped into the sea.

It would be one coincidence too far if it really was an accident and the way the story flows the reader is led to believe that the fire was started deliberatly. I read that story for the first time 20 years ago and I even read the book again a couple of weeks ago and the thought that the fire was anything other than a deliberate act to finish off Tintin had never entered my head until today.

I suppose that it probably was an accident as everyone says, and Allan decided that he could abandon the ship and have his enemies blown sky-high. I think that Allan and Rastapopoulos are both cowards. Allan abandons his ship, and in Flight 714, you see Allan being very cowardly by tormenting Captain Haddock while he is tied up. It's pretty cowardly to do that if you ask me!

cigars of the beeper

All villains are cowards.

In all this, you appear to have forgotten the Africans. There is a large number of them and getting rid of them, Tintin, Haddock, Skut and the weaponry in the other hold would explain destroying an entire ship.

Based on previous experience, Rastapopoulos must have know that it was only a matter of time before Tintin would have exposed his activities, so getting rid of all the evidence in one go would have been a logical thing to do. I seem to recall that he says as much while listening to the exchanges between the plane and the submarine as they track down the Ramona.

Allan's remark about a firework display and impatience at the delayed explosion appears to bear this out: he set the fire deliberately on Rastapopoulos' orders, but did not necessarily inform the whole crew, hence the screams of panic as they abandon ship.

But Allan tells Tintin and Haddock earlier (on page 42) that the plan to get rid of them is to put them ashore at Wadesdah, where there's a price on their heads. Then he goes on to imply that if they refuse to go ashore there, they'll be dumped overboard to be eaten by sharks.

Derfallbienlein is right to point out that there are witnesses to Tintin and Haddock boarding the Ramona, which is presumeably why putting them ashore at Wadesdah to be killed by others is the preferred option. When Rastapopoulos is looking out of his cabin window, laughing as they board the Ramona, he clearly thinks that the plan Alan is about to reveal to Tintin and Haddock will do the job. There's no sense that he thinks it's necessary to blow up his own freighter and get rid of all evidence at this stage. (You're right, mct, that this does become his stated plan once Tintin and Haddock have taken control of the Ramona - he spells it out in the last panel of page 51 - but that's much later, when things are more desperate for him.)

For Allan to suddenly abandon the dumping-them-to-be-killed-at-Wadesdah plan and instead sacrifice the entire ship and deliberately put to sea in a small lifeboat where he's clearly worried about being caught in the explosion and killed himself doesn't seem likely. I think his remark about the forthcoming explosion making a "pretty fireworks display" is grim irony. His body language and beads of sweat don't suggest gleeful anticipation of a preplanned act. I think his impatience for the explosion is because he's braced for it and is now confused that it hasn't happened. And I think the reason he's cross that the fire's gone out (he doesn't realise it's been put out) is because he realises that they've abandoned his ship and his prisoners in a mad panic for no good reason, not because some plan to blow the ship up has failed.

Of course it's possible that Rastapolpulous changes his mind in the middle of the night and radios Allan to abandon the Wadesdah plan and set fire to the shp instead, but why wouldn't Hergé have shown us a panel of him doing this? (Hergé was generally a stickler for absolute clarity.)

And why wouldn't Allan kill Tintin and Haddock in their bunks before starting the fire, to make sure they couldn't wake up and escape? The explosion would leave no recoverable bodies to be forensically examined, so he'd lose nothing by doing this. The fact that he takes no such precautions strongly suggests that he was genuinely surprised by the fire and abandoned ship in a genuine panic.

Also, if Rastapopoulos has decided to cut his losses, curtail his operations, and blow up all the evidence on the night of the Ramona fire (p.43), how come the Arab slaver still comes out to them to inspect the "coke" two days later (on page 48)? Clearly Rastapopoulos hasn't put the word out to his contacts that slaving operations from the Ramona are over, which suggests that he a) didn't decide to blow up the Ramona himself and b) hasn't heard what's happened from Allan yet. If having Allan abandon the Ramona in order to blow it up was all a deliberate plan, Rastapopoulos would surely have arranged for the lifeboat to be quickly picked up, and when he did so, he'd have found out that the explosion plan had failed. Even if he didn't know this, and thought the explosion had succeeded, he'd have told his slaver contacts not to expect the Ramona any more.

As it is, it takes Rastapopoulos another day still for his plane to track down the Ramona, suggesting that he only hears the news that Allan is no longer captaining the Ramona from the Arab slaver, two days after the fire took place.

So, personally, I still think it's clear that the fire is an accident!