The many uses of SeaHawk starring Errol Flynn

Filmed at the height of World War 2, the movie SeaHawk tells the story of Captain Thorpe and English Privateer who is based off of the famous pirate Sir Francis Drake. Thorpe, a privateer of Queen Elizabeth sails the seas in his ship the Albatross. In an attempt to weaken the Spanish empire, and thus derail them from attacking England, he sets off to the New World in an attempt to intercept the Spanish Treasure fleet. During the attempt, he and his men are captured and sentenced to work on Spanish ships for the rest of their lives. While serving his sentence Thorpe discover the Spanish plans to invade England via the Spanish Armada. After escaping his imprisonment and fighting his way back to England, Thorpe is knighted by Queen Elizabeth and gives her the evidence needed to justify the building of a large English navy to protect England.

While the subjects that this film can be used to teach may seem straight forward, there are some interesting nuances to the film.

The obvious areas that you can teach with this movie are Piracy during the age of Exploration, the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada. Those aspects of the movie are directly talked about and shown. However their are two subjects that are a bit more hidden. The first is the fact that this movie can be used to teach World War 2. In the movie the king of Spain states his dream to rule the world, however historians agree that this ambition was not present in King Phillip. But seeing as the film was made in 1940, it is well known that the makers of the movie were using King Phillip to represent Hitler and Spain to represent Germany. The movie has some very overt scenes that make it clear that the movie SeaHawk is talking about England's role as the only European power fighting against Hitler at the time.

Going off of the aspect of Spain being used to represent WW2 Germany, this film can be used to teach about propaganda and show students how movies and the media have been used to influence public opinion on world events.