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Q: Is the poem that Sean Connery quotes at the end of "The Hunt for Red October" real?

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

"And the sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home" is a beautiful line that sums the film up quite nicely — entirely too nicely to be real.

Capt. Marko Ramius (played by Sean Connery in his silver years, long after becoming famous as the definitive James Bond) speaks that line at the end of 1990's "The Hunt for Red October," after he took to the sea with hope of finding a new and better life in the West and knowing that he'd never see his home again. (Pretty spot on for the moment.)

Ramius attributes the line to explorer Christopher Columbus, but in a commentary track on the DVD release, director John McTiernan reveals the true author to be "Red October" screenwriter Larry Ferguson, saying, "Larry wrote the poem that Sean quotes at the end. Obviously, Christopher Columbus never wrote anything like that, but the gimmick works."

That means that not only did explorer Columbus not say it, but it didn't appear in the movie's source novel by Tom Clancy either.

In keeping with Clancy's preference for the technical over the poetic, the last few pages of the book are devoted to the logistics of who went where after disembarking from which boat following the climactic submarine battle.

 

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