Sakr-El-Bahr, The Hawk Of The Sea, The Scourge Of The Mediterranean And The Terror Of Christian Spain

The vast bulk of our pirate story conventions come from Treasure Island. Duh. I do think, however, that one can safely say that the majority of those not originating from Stevenson come from the works of Rafael Sabatini–and movies based upon the works of Rafael Sabatini.

This, naturally, is because Rafael Sabatini’s books are, as a rule, great.

The Sea-Hawk, from 1915, is one of his earliest (possibly his first?) novels, and it does possess a definite lack in the polish that he would show later in Scaramouche and Captain Blood (which is probably the quintessential pirate novel, even beating out Treasure Island in my humble opinion). The Sea-Hawk’s plot never quite manages to get to where it, perhaps, should be, but it’s still a damned lot of fun getting there. However, be warned, this book is not the normal pirate experience that you may be expecting, especially if you’ve seen the movie.

Now, the 1940 Errol Flynn vehicle The Sea Hawk is definitely a great rollicking adventure of a film. In fact, it’s a considerably better movie than 1935’s Captain Blood (which is based on a better book) but it really only connects to its source material by way of the time in which it’s set, and the fact that the hero is a galley slave at one point in the story. Other than that, this is simply a piece of rah-rah propaganda, in which our British heroes only ever manage to break away from pontificating on how great all things British are to wage war against Nazi Germany Spain, and it’s evil ruler Hitler King Phillip. Granted, Phillip II was a rather evil king, but world-domination wasn’t quite his goal, despite what this movie says.

Anyway, tangent over, back to the book. The Sea-Hawk follows the basic Sabatini mold: contented man is betrayed by friend/family/country, forced into a life of violent crime, has lots of adventures, and then redeems himself just enough–with a huge romantic misunderstanding along the way. But what isn’t even slightly touched upon in the aforementioned movie, and what a Google image search made me realize isn’t even shown on most of the different covers to the novel, is that the hero of the story is an Englishman-turned-Moorish-corsair. Basically, events bring him to Morocco, where he converts to Islam and, essentially, wages a war on the Christian world. At one point even going so far as to secretly lead a force of men into England to kidnap the people who did him wrong long ago.

Yikes. I kinda wonder if even writing about this book will put me on a government list.

The fact is, the book doesn’t actually take any sides insofar as cultures or countries are concerned. Our hero, Oliver Tressilian, is a man who’s been done wrong for personal reasons, and who goes on to do others wrong for personal reasons–the Muslims of Morocco are treated just as fairly as the British and French are in most of Sabatini’s novels. (Which is odd because he treats Moors of all races perfectly well here, but in other books showcases a quite racist view of black people, but that’s for another day.)

This novel is definitely a good one to seek out if you’re interested in a more unconventional sort of a pirate tale, or in the earlier work of a master. It’s definitely an exciting book (even if the climax didn’t quite do it for me) and the ridiculously ornate way in which the characters who speak Arabic always talk is kinda loads of fun. But what’s really interesting is how strangely relevant the underlying issue of Islamic World versus Christian World is these days, (moreseo, I think, than in 1915) even if that conflict really only serves as background to the real story.