Tintin Forums

I finished re-reading Benoît Peeters' Hergé Son of Tintin last night, and spotted an interesting detail in one of the endnotes. In the chapter discussing the start of Prisoners of the Sun in the Journal Tintin, it's mentioned that Hergé's fortieth birthday fell on 22nd May 1947, and that a few months earlier, he had "marked this birthday... playfully in a scene. [...] In the port of Callao, the Pachacamac hoists a flag. "Billions of blistering blue barnacles!" exclaims Haddock. "The sign of the fortieth!" "Is to celebrate the commandant's birthday?" Thomson asks him ingenuously."

I was baffled by this, so referred back to the album and realised that it's an error on the part of this book's translator. Haddock actually says "She'll be quarantined!" («le signal de la quarantaine!»), and the original joke in French arises from Thomson confusing quarantaine (quarantine) and quarantième (fortieth). I've read Prisoners of the Sun countless times and never thought there was any more to the mix-up than Thomson assuming a ship puts out flags for the captain's birthday!