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Captain Haddock: His nationality?

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Frankymole
Member
#21 · Posted: 26 Feb 2005 20:04
I don't think a Jacobite would have been "in Charles II's merchant-marine", so the English-language translators may have intended him to be English.

Hergé certainly intended the modern Haddock to be British but who knows which country - maybe even Wales - his ancestor was certainly more a Henry Morgan than a Blackbeard ;o)
rastapopoulos
Member
#22 · Posted: 28 Feb 2005 16:57
I dont think Haddock would be Welsh, though the Henry Morgan connection is credible.
Hmm I dunno though, wouldnt Haddock call Tintin 'Boyo'?
Also if Haddock was from Scotland wouldnt he be proud of his nationality and wear a kilt on special occassions?
Does anyone know of Michael Turner and Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper's views on Haddocks Nationality.
Moderator Note: It's not possible to prove a negative, so let's avoid using it to generate argument - one could say "If he was English, wouldn't he say, 'Jolly good show, old thing! Pip pip!', etc....?"
jock123
Moderator
#23 · Posted: 24 May 2005 10:04
rastapopoulos
I do remember seeing a typed list on Tintin headed paper by Hergé (I think it's in the Tintin at Sea book), with lots of names that were typically English rather than Scottish.
The typed list (it's actually both typed and hand written) in the At Sea book contains names from many places - Patrick, Olivier, Cyril, Norbert, Romuald, Florent, and Yves are on it; the closest that text comes to describing it as "English" is that the names are "predominantly Anglo-Saxon", but it goes onto say that the "palpably Scottish Arshibald emerging as first choice".

rastapopoulos
Also if Haddock was from Scotland wouldnt he be proud of his nationality and wear a kilt on special occassions?

As Galton & Simpson wrote in The Blood Donor: "We're not all Rob Roys, Mr. Hancock!"
I'm guessing that if you are English, no matter how proud you are, you rarely dress up as a Morris Man? ;-)
Tintin Quiz
Member
#24 · Posted: 9 Dec 2006 21:15
[Moved from this thread]
jock123
There isn’t actually anything in the English editions which says that Captain Haddock is English, per se, nor even that he is British; in that respect his origin is as vague as that of Tintin…
Here's an interesting part of the entry on Haddock in Wikipedia:

Haddock's name was suggested by his wife, who noted that haddock was a "sad English fish" over a fish dinner. Hergé then utilised the name for the English captain he'd just introduced. ...
Although it has not been suggested that Hergé based Haddock on any historical persons, it transpired that there were several Haddocks who had served in the navy. Many of the Haddocks of Leigh-on-Sea served in the British Navy of the 17th century, with Admiral Sir Richard Haddock serving in the battle of Sole Bay.[2]
Balthazar
Moderator
#25 · Posted: 10 Dec 2006 01:22
[Also moved from this thread in reply to the preceding post]

Tintin Quiz
Haddock's name was suggested by his wife, who noted that haddock was a "sad English fish" over a fish dinner.
This shows that Hergé knew Haddock was an English name for a fish...

...it transpired that there were several Haddocks who had served in the navy. Many of the Haddocks of Leigh-on-Sea served in the British Navy of the 17th century, with Admiral Sir Richard Haddock serving in the battle of Sole Bay.
...and this certainly interesting information proves that there were English/British Navy sailors and officers called Haddock.

But the use of the word English in this part of the Wikipedia article you quote from -

Hergé then utilised the name for the English captain he'd just introduced.

- is surely just speculation, and speculation which runs counter to the fact that in Hergé's original Secret of the Unicorn (written not that long after he'd first created Haddock) Hergé gives Haddock an ancestor who serves in the French navy. I'm not saying this in itself proves that Haddock can't be English, but if Hergé had envisaged him as such, you'd think he'd have had his ancestor serving in the English navy (as the English translators much later did). Whatever the nationality of the sad fish that gave Hergé the name, the most obvious assumption based on the actual original books is that Hergé intended Haddock to be seen as a Belgian of some sort of Franco-Belgian descent.

In his very readable but sometimes innacurate biography, Harry Thompson makes the same assertion as the Wikipedia article does that Haddock is English in Hergé's original as well as in the English translations. He also recounts that "sad English fish" name-origin story, but also gives no firm reason to think that the character himself was supposed to be English. Later in this biography Harry Thompson uses this unproven assertion that Haddock is English to "prove" his argument that the expedition in The Shooting Star isn't entirely made up of German, Nazi-occupied and Nazi-sympathetic-"neutral" nationalities, so maybe that's why he's so keen on Haddock being a Brit. But, as I say, no real reason or evidence for this assumption is given.

Whether the person who wrote the Wikipedia article you quote was taking his/her "facts" regarding Haddock's nationality from Harry Thompson's book, I don't know, but it seems possible.
jock123
Moderator
#26 · Posted: 11 Dec 2006 12:10
Tintin Quiz
Admiral Sir Richard Haddock serving in the battle of Sole Bay
The ins and outs of the sad English/ British fish have been discussed further up the thread already, but I was charmed to see that a Haddock fought in Sole Bay - something is definitely fishy about that! ;-)
Harrock n roll
Moderator
#27 · Posted: 11 Dec 2006 13:46
Balthazar is absolutely right in that the Wikipedia page doesn't make any case that Haddock is English. The “sad English fish” story on its own is certainly no basis for the claim.

I think the best case for it was made in the Tintin at Sea book. It includes many points already mentioned in this thread about the Chevalier de Hadoque’s familiarity with Royal Navy customs: the very un-French rum found on-board the Unicorn; the cannons which are “secured in the English manner”; the Unicorn scrolls which use ‘W’ for west when it ought to be ‘O’ for ‘Ouest’.

There’s even evidence that Hadoque - possibly a Jacobite who Francisized his name (no pun intended!) and opted for the Paris meridian - still ‘speaks’ English; the shout of “Hurrah”, unheard of in Louis XIV’s fleet, but familiar in the Royal Navy.

Of course, it could be that Hergé was using many English references for his ship research and the English customs just ‘slipped in’ accidentally. It's possible.

However, I think the best evidence is that Hergé might have intended Haddock to be a Brit because of the list of possible first names Hergé made for Picaros. They are overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon or British in origin and spelling - Marmaduke, Edward, Richard, Harold, Henry, John, etc - and of course Hergé finally settled on the very Scottish Archibald.

Having recently re-read this thread and taking into account all the other evidence put forward here - his former sea-mates having English names like Allan Thompson, Jumbo and Chester, the Karaboudjan/Glengarry connection, etc - I’d say there’s a very strong case that he really was meant to be a Brit. The Haddock name list finally swung it for me anyway
sliat_1981
Member
#28 · Posted: 28 May 2007 07:40
I dont know about you, but I never though of Haddock as anything but Belgian, just like the most the regulars. There was nothing to suggest he wasn't. I think if he was British, it would have been mentioned. He was never given a British accent in any of the French-language movies he appeared in (in the French versions). None of the ones I saw anyway.
miloumuttmitt
Member
#29 · Posted: 28 May 2007 16:42
On the official Tintin website, the Haddock insult page has him talking in an accent halfway between a British and a Scottish.
Wamthet
Member
#30 · Posted: 10 Jun 2007 13:15
He is British, isn't he? Archibald tends to be a predominantly British name.

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