True to his quest for realism and authenticity, Hergé, who aims to produce a demanding and coherent work, provides rich research to faithfully represent his ships. He thus gathers a large iconographic documentation, but also draws from models or sketches made on the spot.
"If we can speak of a hymn to the sea in Hergé's work, it is also because the latter represents the only access to the unknown. For Tintin, thirsty for adventures and who, in The Shooting Star, has already set foot on the soil of four continents, the sea remains the only space still virgin and unexplored, which allows him to breathe air that no one has yet breathed."
— Samuel Bidaud, For a poetics of the sea in Tintin.
However, in the early adventures of the series, particularly until King Ottokar's Sceptre in 1939,
Tintin is portrayed as a traveling hero. He utilizes various modes of transportation, traversing land, sea, and air, with a focus on speed and distance. Literary critic
Philippe Goddin points out: "For about ten years, Tintin maintained with the maritime universe, and more generally with the liquid element, the same frank and uninhibited relationship that he displayed towards other means of transport."[4]
During this period, Hergé portrayed ships as significant characters rather than mere boats, such as The Unicorn and the Sirius.[5] The friendship between Tintin and Haddock, forged on the Karaboudjan cargo ship, became pivotal, leading Tintin who previously traveled on
passenger ships, to exclusively travel on
cargo ships. Hergé again reflected the changing times, as
World War II shifted commercial travel from passenger ships to airplanes.[6]
The "naval rendezvous of the Red Sea"
In 1956, The Red Sea Sharks constituted, according to Yves Horeau, "the culmination of maritime adventure in Hergé's work". In this album, where the sea is omnipresent, the abundance of boats is a true "naval rendezvous of the
Red Sea" for the writer.[7] However, this album marks "the true farewell [of] heroes to the high seas," according to the expression of the professor Michel Pierre, since, in the last adventures of the series, Tintin's maritime escapades and walks in port docks are left behind, although the story of Flight 714 to Sydney is set on a
Pacific island.[2]
In his work, Hergé explores different aspects of the maritime world. He portrays his hero in luxurious ships as well as in the sinister atmosphere of merchant marine trafficking. Additionally, he evokes adventure, piracy tales, and scientific exploration, all while touching on the disasters closely linked to the maritime imagination.[2]
Inspiration sources
In the mid-1930s,
Hergé began to focus more on the realism in his works, conducting extensive research before each adventure.[8] Therefore, most of the elements from industrial arts are perfectly identifiable, as pointed out by literary critic
Philippe Goddin.[9]
As the world of the sea and boats is not familiar to the author, he made efforts to enhance his knowledge in this area. Starting in 1935, he subscribed to the marine magazine Wandelaer et sur l'eau and sought guidance from the writer and collector Alexandre Berqueman, for whom he designated the cover of a book titled Belgian Maritime Museums. Moreover, Hergé would occasionally visit the
Ten Reuken park in the Brussels suburbs to observe
model enthusiasts.[10]
In early 1942, he gathered a wealth of written and iconographic documentation to prepare for writing The Secret of the Unicorn, the eleventh volume of the series. He relied in particular on the model collection of Prince
Rodolphe de Croÿ and scale models provided by the Chauveau brothers, antique dealers from Brussels. These documents included numerous sketches of vessels inspired by those of the
French Royal Navy, even though Hergé likely never visited the
National Maritime Museum in Paris.[10] He also initiated a collaboration with model maker Gérard Liger-Belair, manager of a model shop in Brussels. Hergé commissioned him to create an accurate model of The Unicorn to verify the ship's conformity with his drawings and to realistically represent it from different angles.[11]
During the preparation of The Red Sea Sharks in 1956, Hergé consulted numerous works, including an illustrated edition of Secrets of the Red Sea by
Henry de Monfreid, several issues of the Revue maritime, and the book A Submariner of the Royal Navy by Edward Young.[12] He also wnt in a four-day voyage aboard the
cargo shipReine-Astrid with his assistant
Bob de Moor, which travelled between
Antwerp and
Gothenburg.[13] The photos and sketches taken during this trip were used to draw the sequences where the characters navigate on the Ramona.[14][12] All the other ships depicted in the album were also drawn from photographs of real models, meticulously documented by Hergé using the research he had accumulated throughout his career.[15]
Popularity
In 1942, alongside the publication of The Secret of the Unicorn, Hergé fulfilled a request from Gérard Liger-Belair to create a model of The Unicorn for sale at his Brussels store, Au petit constructeur (To the little builder).[10] The two men had met in 1938 at
Les Scouts, where Liger-Belair served as the secretary. Before the
war, he had also sold a
balsa wood model of the H.22 Stratonef, featured in Mr. Pump's Legacy, the first story in The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko, another series by Hergé.[16]
In 2011, a new model of The Unicorn was introduced after the release of the film T
he Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn directed by
Steven Spielberg. Designed by Pierre-Henri Le Coz, a shipbuilder from
Roscoff, the model was produced in 500 copies at a workshop in
Vietnam.[17] That same year,
Hachette editions initiated a collection of 110 volumes to assemble the ship model, with each installment containing components of the boat and an accompanying explanatory booklet.[18][19][20]
In 1999, an exhibition titled Tintin, Haddock, and the Boats was organized in
Saint-Nazaire by the association Les 7 Soleils, led by Jean-Claude Chemin. Yves Horeau created an album for the exhibition, which was reissued in 2021. This exhibition, enriched and expanded, was presented as Mille sabords! in 2001 at the
Palais de Chaillot in
Paris, at the initiative of the
National Maritime Museum and the
Hergé Foundation.[21] Subsequently, the exhibition had several presentations abroad, such as in
London,
Barcelona,
Stockholm, and
Ostend.[17]
Boat census
The boats featured in The Adventures of Tintin are listed in alphabetical order. Some are depicted only in the original black and white versions of the albums, while others are illustrated in the color editions. Similarly, certain ships are only mentioned by the characters without being visually depicted.
The Aurora is, in The Shooting Star, the polar ship that carries the scientific expedition of the FERS (European Fund for Scientific Research) in search of a
meteorite in the
Arctic Ocean.[27] The ship also features a
seaplane on board. In an interview with the writer
Numa Sadoul,
Hergé expressed regret over the drawing of the ship, as it was created without a model or prototype and would not be seaworthy.[28][27]
C
The City of Doodlecastle is a
smuggling ship for
opium that appears only in the original black and white version of Cigars of the Pharaoh. Its silhouette resembles that of a
tugboat.[29] In the color edition, it is replaced by a ship with a completely different appearance: the large motor yacht Sereno.[30]
The Karaboudjan is the cargo ship on which
Tintin is imprisoned in The Crab with the Golden Claws. He encounters
Captain Haddock, the ship's commander, whose authority is undermined by his second-in-command,
Allan Thompson, who plies Captain Haddock with
whiskey to take control of the ship and use it for smuggling
opium in the cargo holds without intereference. The ship is later renamed Djebel Amilah after a staged shipwreck in the
Atlantic Ocean, as part of the smugglers attempt to cover their tracks.[10] Essayist
Jean-Marie Apostolidès describes the Karaboudjan as "the most rotten place the hero has ever experienced" in his adventures.[33] The origin of the shup's name has various theories. According to Yves Horeau, it is a
blend word invented by Hergé from two
geographically close place names:
Kara-Bougaz,[34] a
Turkmenlagoon located east of the
Caspian Sea, which is also the title of a novel by Soviet writer
Konstantin Paustovsky,[35] and
Azerbaijan.[34] Another theory suggests a connection to karabouya (or carabouya), an
aniseed and
licorice-flavored candy sold in Belgian markets.[36] The ship's appearance, while docked in the harbor, is based on a photograph of the Glengarry, a Scottish ship from
Glasgow.[24] Cartoonist
Riad Sattouf pays homage to the Karaboudjan by featuring it in the third volume of his series The Arab of the Future, released in 2016.[37]
The Normandie, the largest ocean liner in the world and a source of pride for France in the 1930s, is subtly depicted twice in Tintin comics. It is first shown in the black and white version of The Broken Ear, and later in the colored version of Tintin in America after the war, despite the ship's destruction in 1942. In the first version of The Broken Ear, the Normandie allows Tintin to return to Europe at the end of the adventure.[40] Similarly, in Tintin in America, Tintin gazes at the New York skyline from the ship's deck. In the 1992 television series The Adventures of Tintin, a poster reminiscent of Cassandre's work is displayed in Tintin's cabin aboard The Scheherazade.
In The Shooting Star, the Peary is the rival ship of the Aurore in a race towards a meteorite. It is chartered by a bank from the state of
Sao Rico and led by a certain
Bohlwinkel. The ship is named after the American explorer
Robert Peary, known for his expeditions across Greenland and in search of the
North Pole, where competed with
Frederick Cook.[44] According to Yves Horeau and Jacques Hiron, the design of the Peary is based on the Pourquoi-Pas, the polar exploration vessel of Commander
Jean-Baptiste Charcot, which sank in 1936 off the coast of
Iceland, a photograph included in Hergé's personal archives.[45]
The Prince Baudouin, named after the
young Belgian prince, is a
ferry that connects
Ostend to
Dover. Tintin takes this ferry to reach England in The Black Island. The boat is depicted and mentioned in the first black and white edition, but is only identified in the color edition.[40][46]
R
In The Red Sea Sharks, the Ramona is the cargo ship commanded by
Allan Thompson and owned by the
Marquis di Gorgonzola. Its purpose was to transport black African slaves to
Arabia. Captain Haddock assumes command after Allan and his crew abandon the ship due to a fire. The Ramona is based on the SS Égypte and the cargo ship Reine-Astrid, which sailed between
Antwerp and
Gothenburg.
Hergé and
Bob de Moor spent four days aboard the Reine-Astrid in August 1956.[13]
The SS Ranchi, an English ocean liner launched in 1925,[47] is the ship on which
Tintin boards to depart from
Shanghai to
Mumbai in The Blue Lotus. However, he is kidnapped and taken back to
China by the secret society of the Sons of the Dragon. The ship is named after a
city in
India[32] and its design is inspired by the SS
Paris, which was launched in 1921.[48]
The Ranpura is the ocean liner that Tintin takes at the end of The Blue Lotus to return to Europe. It is named in the original black and white version and only depicted in the color version. Hergé likely used several models to design it: Michael Farr notes a resemblance to the Vaterland,[49] while Jean-Marie Embs and
Philippe Mellot associate it with several photographs showing the Cap Polonio, another ocean liner of the
Hamburg America Line.[48]
The Requin is the code name of a pirate submarine commanded by
Kurt and under the orders of
Marquis di Gorgonzola in The Red Sea Sharks. It is a
Type VII submarine from 1939, a most commonly used model by the
Kriegsmarine during
World War II.[25] One of its
frogman, a combat swimmer tasked with planting a mine on the Ramona's hull, is inspired by a real person:
Lionel Crabb, a
Royal Navy and
Secret Intelligence Service agent. His photograph was used as the cover for the book The Frogmen by German writer Cajus Bekker in 1955. Hergé used this image to accurately depict the swimmer's equipment.[50]
The Sereno is a motor
yacht[52] owned by
Allan Thompson in Cigars of the Pharaoh. Used for
smuggling,[53] it briefly carries the sarcophagi containing Tintin,
Snowy, and Professor Siclone. Three ship models may have inspired it. The first model is a large yacht,[54] the MVSavarona,[55] with its
bow faithfully reproduced in the drawing,[31] albeit at half scale. However, the dimensions of the Savarona[56] exceed those of the Sereno,[57] which are precisely half the size. Therefore, the drawing corresponds to the second source model, the yacht Gunilda from 1897, with a bow and figurehead that closely resemble those of the Sereno. The dimensions and overall appearance of the Sereno match those of the Gunilda. The third potential inspiration for the Sereno is the Italian gunboat Aurora,[58] which matches in size[59] and appearance, although Hergé did not retain the black color of the Aurora's hull for the Sereno.Gunilda 6
The Sirius (1) is a
trawler owned by
Captain Chester, a friend of
Captain Haddock. It is briefly seen in The Shooting Star, and Captain Chester lends it to Haddock when he embarks on a quest for the treasure of Red Rackham's Treasure. It is a replica of the trawler John-O.88, constructed at the Jos Boel et Fils shipyards in
Tamise and put into service in
Ostend during the 1930s.[60] The collector Alexandre Berqueman, a friend of Hergé, provided the manufacturer's blueprints to the cartoonist to ensure accuracy in the depiction.[61]
The Sirius (2), featured in a painting in Captain Haddock's apartment in The Secret of the Unicorn, is the first steam transatlantic ship to cross the
Atlantic in 1838.[60]
In Land of Black Gold, the
oil tankerSpeedol Star is depicted as operating between Europe and the Middle East. Tintin, along with the Thomson and
Thompson twins, boards this vessel to travel to
Khemed. The ship's design was revised multiple times, with the 1971 edition featuring sketches by
Bob de Moor based on a tanker from 1939 docked in the
port of Antwerp.[38]
The Washington is an ocean liner that operates between Europe and North America in The Broken Ear. It is on this ship that Tintin finally retrieves the fetish stolen from the Brussels Ethnographic Museum.[38]
The cargo ship Jupiter and the steamer Tanganyika are two vessels that, according to the radio, sank during a
storm off the coast of
Vigo in The Crab with the Golden Claws.[38]
The Valmy is the cargo ship commanded by Captain Chester in The Seven Crystal Balls. It frequently visits the port of La Rochelle.[38]
The Vilnaranda is a fictional distressed ship created by Tintin's rivals to hinder his expedition progress in The Shooting Star.[38] During his investigation of the alleged shipwreck, Tintin receives reports from various vessels confirming their well-being: the Vilhelmina, the Villafranca di Verona, the Villang... (incomplete name), the Villaverde, the Ville de Lyon, the Ville de Nantes, the Ville de Rouen, the Ville de St-Nazaire, and the Ville de Toulon.[38] The Ville de Rouen is also mentioned in the first edition of The Blue Lotus as owned by Mitsuhirato and intended for opium delivery to the
port of Le Havre.[30]
^Goddin, Philippe (2008). "Un type du siècle de l'auto, du béton armé et de la TSF". Tintin à la découverte des grandes civilisations (in French).
Le Figaro,
Beaux Arts Magazine. p. 122.
ISBN978-2-8105-0029-1.
^Soumois, Frédéric (July 2011). "Le Secret de La Licorne : En ligne directe". Les personnages de Tintin dans l'histoire : Les événements de 1930 à 1944 qui ont inspiré l'œuvre d'Hergé (in French). Paris:
Historia. p. 101.
^Sattouf, Riad (2016). L'Arabe du futur : Une jeunesse au Moyen-Orient (1985-1987) (in French). Vol. 3. Paris:
Allary Éditions. pp. 28–29.
ISBN978-2-37073-094-7.
^Goddin, Philippe; Hergé (2014). La Malédiction de Rascar Capac : Les Secrets du Temple du soleil (in French). Brussels:
Casterman. p. 46.
ISBN978-2-203-08843-6.
^Jürgen Witthöft, Hans (1968). Das Hansa-Bauprogramm : Wehrwissenschaftliche Berichte Band 6 (in German). Munich: J. F. Lehmanns.
^Pierre, Michel. "Paquebots, luxe, calme et volupté". Tintin et la mer (in French). p. 37.
^
abHergé; Embs, Jean-Marie; Mellot, Philippe; Goddin, Philippe (2010). Le Lotus bleu. Les Archives Tintin (in French). Brussels:
Moulinsart/
Casterman. pp. 16–20.
ISBN978-2-87424-200-7.
^Farr, Michael (2001). Tintin : Le rêve et la réalité (in French). Brussels:
Editions Moulinsart.
^Built by the shipyard
Blohm+Voss in
Hamburg and commissioned in 1931 for the American socialite and philanthropist
Emily Roebling Cadwallader, it was then —at the time of its construction— the most luxurious yacht in the world. Acquired in 1938 by the Turkish state for
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, it was later —after
World War II, in 1951— converted into a training ship for the Turkish navy under the name Güneş Dil, and then leased (in 1989) to a Turkish businessman who used it for prestigious public relations purposes.
^124 metres long, over 6000 tonnes of displacement.
^Approximately 60 metres long, and 1000 tonnes of displacement.
^"Sérieuse référence". Les Personnages de Tintin dans l'histoire : Les évènements de 1930 à 1944 qui ont inspiré l'œuvre d'Hergé (in French).
Le Point,
Historia. 2011.
ISBN978-2-7466-3509-8.
ISSN0242-6005.