Thursday, April 25, 2013

Hornblower

(Picture found at IMDB.)

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a little while, it isn't something new to hear that one of my favourite kinky fantasies involves M/M naval whippings and canings, especially when someone is made to kiss the gunner's daughter. Obviously, I have already managed to infect others, as this post by Bogey from Our Bottoms Burn proves.

Our reader and friend Fenris kindly pointed out a fascinating film scene to me which features a harsh punishment of a young midshipman named Mr Wellard. It's from the 2001 episode "Hornblower: Mutiny" of the TV series Hornblower. As Wikipedia explains, the series is "based on C. S. Forester's novels about the fictional character Horatio Hornblower, a Royal Naval officer during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars."

On the IMDB the plot of the episode is summarized as follows: "Sir Edward Pellew visits Horatio Hornblower who is jail in Jamaica awaiting his trial on a charge of making a mutiny. His problems began six months earlier when he was appointed Third Lieutenant aboard the HMS Renown under the famous Captain James Sawyer. It soon becomes apparent to several of the officers, including Horatio's friend Archie Kennedy who is aboard ship as Fourth Lieutenant that the Captain is suffering from madness of some sort. He is cruel and sees conspiracies everywhere. Both Horatio and Midshipman Wellard prove to be the particular objects of his wrath. [...]"

In a comment on YouTube the reason for the caning was explained like this: Mr Wellard “went against the captain's orders when the sail tore - like he was taught to do and should have done. He did nothing wrong, but the captain has become extremely paranoid and sees everything as mutiny.” Here is the caning, or, actually, the canings (I am not really sure what actually started the second round) that is / are carried out as a result:



As with all kinds of spankings, it is of course the kinky fantasy version that I find appealing, not the real historical one. So I am very glad to know that this is just a film scene and no real harm was done. But even in that light, the caning is still a bit too harsh for me and that even though I am into rather severe canings.

There are several aspects of the scene which I find very appealing, though. Of course there is the formal, ritualistic style of the whole procedure. In addition, Mr Wellard, the handsome young midshipman (he is cute, is he not?) who is caned in the scene, is not portrayed as a deserving offender but rather as a victim of the captain's paranoia. This allows for a high degree of sympathy with him during his ordeal. Therefore, his fellow sailors of all ranks (except for one guy) obviously have a lot of sympathy for the young midshipman as well and visibly suffer with him, counting the strokes and wishing for the punishment to be over as quickly as possible. On the other hand, Mr Wellard is not portrayed as being weak and completely helpless. He calmly surrenders to the punishment without any resistance, making sure to at least keep his pride. I do not only like Mr Wellard's bravery, I also enjoy his very restraint reactions which nevertheless reveal the great distress he is in.

In all these regards, the scene is right up my alley, even though it is much too severe, as I already mentioned before. I was also looking for another, less brutal naval caning film scene for quite some time which I had seen many years ago and which Fenris has finally found as well. I will share that one with you one day, too. And I definitely have to find Ludwig and me some authentic naval uniforms!

9 comments:

Pandora said...

I love Hornblower and this sounds like 100% my thing for all the reasons you describe, but the video isn't working for me! I'm just getting noise and "an error occurred"...

I'm very keen to shoot some naval punishments, M/F and M/M, for Dreams of Spanking once we have the budget to do it properly. :)

Kaelah said...

@ Pandora:
Sorry, I just realised that there was a small mistake in the code for embedding the clip! It should work properly now. More naval punishments on Dreams of Spanking would be great indeed. I already loved to see Caroline being caned in her beautiful authentic uniform. :-)

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed seeing the Hornblower movies. Most of the punishment in naval scenes is very harsh.

Thank you for sharing.

Hug,
joey

PS I have started writing my MM story.

Our Bottoms Burn said...

...the handsome young midshipman... the reason Bacall did not miss any of these episodes.

Fenris said...

I am happy to hear that you enjoyed the scenes from these two movies. The scene from "Hornblower" appeals to me for the same reasons you described, i.e. restrained reactions, unfair punishment and the bottom keeping his dignity.
I guess most spankos have fond memories of scenes from movies they watched as they were younger and before the internet was widespread and it became easy to discover there are other "perverts".
By the way, the implement used does not seem to be an ordinary cane as the surface is not smooth but rather knobby (you can get a glimpse at 4:51). Maybe it is a whangee cane?

Peter8862 said...

Before the war, caning was common in the UK. Moored off my town on the lower Thames were two training ships preparing young men for the navy. I knew one of the instructors who described the canings carried out on the drill deck as headroom was too low elsewhere. They were caned while tied to the vaulting horse and dressed in thin cotton gym shorts. So perhaps you don't need those naval uniforms Kaelah. Canings were brutal and gory, as is confirmed by those in another training ship, TS Mercury, on the Hamble River. The bad old days !

Peter8862 said...

Those training ships were called WARSPITE and EXMOUTH = just remembered.

Lea said...

I've never heard of this one before. Thanks for sharing.

Kaelah said...

@ Joey:
I look forward to reading your M/M story! I think I have to get myself the whole Hornblower series, so far I have only seen the excerpts I linked to.

@ Our Bottoms Burn:
Seems like Bacall has a good taste, Bogey! Which also tells something about you in a way. After all, you are the one whom Bacall has finally chosen. :-)

@ Fenris:
Thanks a lot for having sent me the links to the clips! Usually, I am not so much into unfair punishments because they make me so angry about the injustice that it takes away all the kinky enjoyment. But in this case it works out fine. I guess that is partly because it is implied that while the captain is overreacting, young Mr Wellard has indeed ignored an order, so in a way the punishment is "justified" by the rules of discipline on the ship, if much too severe. Furthermore, the fact that Mr Wellard manages to keep his pride and that his fellow sailors cheer for him makes the unfairness easier to bear. I don't know exactly how the cane that is used in the scene is called (but you might indeed be right about it being a whangee cane). I definitely wouldn't want to be caned with it. I guess the ripples are there to cause more pain and damage than a normal cane with a smooth surface would produce. By the way, I searched for pictures of rippled canes in order to find out more about how those canes are called and I found some really beautiful specimen of canes / crops made for horse-riding... ;-)

@ Peter6682:
Yes, the real thing definitely wasn't nice! You are of course right about the uniforms with regard to authenticity. It it would be great to have them nonetheless to satisfy my uniform fetish. :-)

@ Lea:
I had never heard of the series, either, until Fenris sent me the link to the clip. I am actually surprised that the series seems to be so well-known and popular!