Red Rackham's Treasure
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| Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure (Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge) |
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Red Rackham's Treasure (Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge) is one of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero.
Red Rackham's Treasure is the twelfth in the series. It is a continuation of The Secret of the Unicorn, and is one of very few Tintin books to directly carry on the story of the preceding title.
It is notable for the first appearance of the eccentric and deaf but ingenious Professor Cuthbert Calculus.
[edit] The storyline
In The Secret of the Unicorn, Tintin and Captain Haddock discovered a map that they believe must lead to pirate treasure. Red Rackham's Treasure depicts their search for the treasure.
Tintin and the Captain hire a boat under Haddock's command, to search for said treasure. As the crew prepare for the search, their plans are discovered and publicized enough for Tintin and Haddock to have to deal with numerous strangers claiming to be Rackham's descendants and insisting on a share of the treasure (but they are quickly driven away by Haddock). Another petitioner is Professor Calculus, an eccentric and largely deaf inventor who offers the use of a special shark-shaped, electrically powered one-man submarine to help search for the sunken ship without being bothered by the numerous sharks in the area. The treasure hunters turn him down and later set off for the trip.
Before Tintin and the Captain clear the port, their police friends, Thomson and Thompson intercept them with orders to join the crew to protect the treasure hunters from the possible threat of Max Bird, who escaped from prison (who ends up never being seen or mentioned again, making him a MacGuffin for getting the detectives on board the ship). Shortly after the departure, Tintin and Haddock discover that Calculus has stowed away on board (in a lifeboat, complete with bedclothes and a tin of biscuits, which the ship's cook had blamed Snowy for swiping from the galley). The professor has stashed the complete parts assembly of his sub in the hold--removing the Captain's whiskey stash in the process. Despite initially threatening to throw Cuthbert into the hold on bread and water, he grudgingly decides to keep him along for the trip.
Initially, the party cannot find anything at the coordinates stated on the parchments (), but then Tintin hypothesizes that Sir Francis used a Paris meridian instead of the Greenwich one (which would yield ). Sure enough, the ship reaches an unknown and uninhabited island, where they think the treasure is buried. As they come ashore to explore it, the Captain stubs his toe on a piece of wood protruding from the sand; while the Thompsons are busy fending off a crab that's biting their toes, Tintin aids Haddock in excavating what turns out to be the remains of Sir Francis Haddock's rowboat. As they penetrate into the interior of the island, they encounter numerous skulls, which Tintin deduces are the remains of the island's cannibalistic former inhabitants. There is also a magnificent paganistic icon of Sir Francis, and numerous parrots that repeat the Haddockian argot, which Tintin realizes has been passed down for generations.
Calculus' sub proves useful for the search for the sunken Unicorn, while the actual examination of the wreck itself is performed with a hardhat diving suit. The Thompson twins soon begin to rue their decision to join the treasure-hunt, because they are consigned to manning the gigantic air pumps supplying the diving suit when Tintin, and later the Captain, explore the wreck. While facing complications like shark attacks, they discover a gold bejeweled cross, a strongbox of old documents, the figurehead of the ship and, to Captain Haddock's delight, a large supply of vintage Jamaican Rum.
Although the search is otherwise unproductive, the crew spots a large wooden cross on the island itself and Tintin believes that the reference in their map to "under the Eagle's cross" could refer to it as the marker for the treasure in Sir Francis's calendar etchings. Upon coming to the cross the party begins to dig, but after a while, Tintin realizes that they are following a false lead considering Sir Francis would not leave his treasure on an island he did not intend to return to, and they head back for the ship. For a moment, it seems that the Thompsons are missing, but it turns out that they have decided to fill in the hole, just in case someone might come along and fall into it.
Although there are further dives of the wreck, they never actually find the treasure itself and they go home disappointed. Upon disembarking, the Captain is accosted by a reporter; impishly Haddock refers him to "my secretary, Mr. Calculus," whom the reporter futilely tries to interview.
Once home, Calculus' further examination of the parchment documents in the chest they retrieved say that Haddock is heir to the large estate of Marlinspike Hall. At this discovery Tintin insist that Haddock must purchase it, but the Captain declines considering he is short on funds on account of his wasted expense of their failed treasure hunt. However, Calculus, who is flush with money from the government after a profitable sale of his sub design, overcomes that difficulty in gratitude for a successful test run.
In the cellars of the main house, amongst all the junk left by the malevolent Bird brothers, they find a statue of Saint John and Tintin realizes he is called "The Eagle of Patmos", the island where he was supposedly exiled to, and is often depicted with that bird. The statue is holding a globe, and Tintin accidentally finds that the island Sir Francis Haddock was exiled on is a trigger button to open the globe. The treasure was hidden inside the globe — and the statue was holding a cross above it, just as the map indicated.
[edit] Trivia
The shark-shaped submarine on the book's cover was the inspiration for "Troy," the real-life shark-shaped submersible constructed by aquatic filmmaker and oceanographic explorer Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau.
A joke in the book involves irregular navigational calculations that place the ship far from its real location. In the original French version, the calculations place the ship in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Methuen English translation alters this to Westminster Abbey, London; the Golden Press translation alters it to St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.
Dustin Hoffman read this book to his son in Kramer vs. Kramer.
| The Adventures of Tintin | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creation of Tintin · Books, films, and media · Ideology of Tintin | ||||
| Characters: | Supporting · Minor · Complete list | |||
| Miscellany: | Hergé · Marlinspike · Captain Haddock's exclamations | |||
