Warner Bros-1940
Starring Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Claude Rains, Donald Crisp, Flora Robson, Alan Hale, Henry Daniell
Associate producer Henry Blake
Executive producer Hal B. Wallis
Screenplay by Howard Koch and Seton J. Mill
Directed by Michael Curtiz
  
The film starts in Spain, 1585, and right from the beginning, it is clear that this will not be a subtle film. King Phillip is telling his ministers that Spain should dominate the whole world but only after it conquers North Europe, which can only be done once it has conquered their secret backer, England. Then it will conquer all of the world, so that there is no world, just Spain.

The camera shifts to a Spanish galley to show how evil the Spanish really were. The producers must have taken every skinny actor they could find to play the exhausted galley slaves, who are all British, and the overseer does not spare the lash. Having their ships propelled by galley slaves immediately establishes the Spanish as evil totalitarians.

Fortunately, they are about to be rescued by Thorpe (modeled on Francis Drake), played by Errol Flynn, who prepares to attack the galleon even though his ship is outgunned. Thorpe’s crew is basically another group of jolly men just like Robin Hood’s men. It goes without saying that the Spanish gunners could not hit the side of the barn, and even though the Spanish fight bravely it is a foregone conclusion. We see the mechanics of boarding, where the crew of one ship literally pulls the two ships close together. The slaves are freed, the loot is taken away and Thorpe falls in love with the niece of the Spanish ambassador, who will clearly be the heroine because she hangs her head in shame when she sees the wizened, old galley slaves being freed.  

Flynn’s usual love interest, Olivia de Havilland, was presumably too fair-skinned to pass for Spanish so she was replaced by Brenda Marshall. The lack of chemistry must have been apparent to Curtiz since he returned to using de Havilland for the next Flynn vehicle, Santa Fe Trail.

The English privateers, Frobisher, Hawkins, Wolfe, Logan, Latourche, and Thorpe, collectively known as the Sea Hawks, have been giving their loot to Queen Elizabeth so that she could build a powerful fleet but the treasury still can not afford it. Wolfingham, the chancellor, does not want to build a fleet because it would provoke Phillip, who is known to be building an armada.

Flora Robson plays Queen Elizabeth as shrewd and intelligent with a savage wit. She is strong but aware of the danger of openly opposing Spain. Looking at the set for the Queen’s court, it seems unlikely that she could have ever matched Warners’ design budget. Curtiz knew what he was doing when he went over budget, the reconstruction of a Spanish galleon is excellent and it is hard to believe that this was all filmed in a giant water tank.

In public, she criticizes Thorpe, in private he gives the crown a share of the loot, which is what Drake did. This was only fair since the Queen was often an investor in his voyages. He pushes her to build a fleet but she responds that England can not match Phillip’s vast resources and must rely on diplomacy. You know, there is no denying that anyone but Flynn would look like a complete nancy boy in a doublet and cape.

Thorpe wants to attack the Spanish treasure fleet while it is still in harbor at Panama and thus deprive Phillip of those resources. It turns out that Wolfingham is conspiring with the Spanish ambassador and hopes to replace Elizabeth. He figures out Thorpe’s plan and warns the Spanish governor at Vera Cruz to set a trap. The crew is ambushed in the jungle, they are sentenced by the Spanish Inquisition to be galley slaves, then chained to their oars and the whipping begins. The Spanish ambassador tells the queen that Spain has caught Thorpe and she must imprison the Sea Hawks or fight Spain. In the end, Elizabeth fears war’s effect on her people and orders the arrest of the Sea Hawks.

The commonly held belief that England’s tiny navy barely managed to defeat an overwhelmingly powerful armada is inaccurate. Elizabeth had actually built up a strong fleet as it became clear that war with Spain was unavoidable and most of the ships in the admittedly large Armada were troop ships, not warships. However, Howard Koch, the screenwriter, knew that England was fighting for its life in the Battle of Britain and he had no patience for appeasement.  

For a film made in 1940, the lives of the galley slaves are not whitewashed, the men look exhausted, sleeping on their oars because they are chained to them, and several die from the ordeal. Learning that evidence of Phillip’s plan to attack England is on the ship, Thorpe leads a revolt. Since it is an Errol Flynn film, they not only escape but capture another ship. Flynn being Flynn, he wins the love of the Spanish ambassador’s niece, sneaks into the castle, where he fights four guards at a time, he really could fence, and then fights an incredible duel against Wolfingham across half of the castle, where much of the battle is seen only through their shadows on the walls, and finally gives Elizabeth evidence of the Armada’s approach.

Faced with evidence of naked aggression, the queen makes a stirring speech about how England must prepare itself for a war it did not want and did everything possible to avoid but the ruthless ambition of a man threatens to engulf the world so they need to show that the Earth does not belong to any one man but to all men. Since the speech is really a call to arms for America to fight Nazi Germany, unlike a conventional film, the movie does not end with the destruction of the Armada but with Elizabeth pledging to build a mighty fleet to oppose Spain.

In actuality, none of this would have been necessary since the existence of a fleet the size of the Armada could hardly be kept secret and Elizabeth knew there were no other targets worthy of such a fleet but who cares about such details when you are watching the king of the swashbucklers in his prime.