Coal on board

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Coal on board ( French original title: Coke en stock ) is the 19th Tintin album by the Belgian illustrator Hergé . It was first published in 1958. The main topic of the volume is slavery and arms smuggling .

action

After going to the cinema, Tim and Captain Haddock bump into the General Alcazar on a street corner . He seems quite confused and avoids a conversation. As he walks on, he loses his wallet, which Tim wants to bring back to him. However, he realizes that Alcazar is not known in the hotel that he himself named. Back in Mühlenhof Castle , the two discover, much to the chagrin of the captain, that Abdallah , the son of Emir Ben Kalisch Ezab, has stayed with his court in Mühlenhof. Later, Tim and the captain of the Schulzes learn that the Alcazar is apparently old on the black marketMilitary aircraft wants to buy to get in San Theodoros to return to power a coup .

When they find him at the right hotel, he is negotiating with Dawson to buy the planes . Tim is already known as a seedy figure from earlier adventures. When Tim follows Dawson, he learns about another mysterious deal from de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito aircraft. Back in Mühlenhof, he also discovers in the daily the reason why the emir sent his son Abdallah to Mühlenhof: he himself was put into a coup by his archenemy Bab El Ehr, apparently with the help of military aircraft supplied by Dawson.

The treasure house in Petra , model for the hideaway of the emir

Then Tim and the captain travel to Watisdah, the capital of Khemed . However, their arrival has already been announced by Dawson and they are denied entry there without explanation and they are sent back to the plane to Beirut , in addition, a stranger smuggles a time bomb into the plane. Before the bomb explodes, the DC-3 " luckily " had to make an emergency landing due to an engine fire . You then make your way back to Watisdah on foot, but you take a hidden entrance and find shelter at Senhor Oliveira de Figueira . He tells them that six months ago the emir had a falling out with the Arabair airline that serves Watisdah, but doesn't know exactly why. Practically at the same time, Bab El Ehr marched into Watisdah with an air force that suddenly appeared and took power. Oliveira also knows where the emir is hiding. Tim and the captain go to find him.

Meanwhile, Muell Pasha, a military leader of Bab El Ehr's armed forces and already under the name of Dr. JW Müller from other Tintin stories known character learn that the two are in the desert. He sends his main battle tanks and planes out to kill them, but due to a misunderstanding, the planes shut down their own tanks and miss the heroes. At the emir they learn the reason for the falling out with Arabair: The emir is extremely angry that the airline refused to fulfill a wish of his pampered son, namely that the planes should fly a few loops before landing in Watisdah . He is apparently completely unaware that something like this would be dangerous and that commercial aircraft are not designed for it at all. The emir also accuses the airline, which also serves Mecca , of being involved in the slave trade. The head of the airline is a certain Di Gorgonzola , who obviously has his fingers in all dirty business.

De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito

Tim and the captain set off for Mecca on board a small sailing ship . On the way, however, they are attacked by two Mosquito fighter planes. Tim can shoot down a machine, but the boat still catches fire and they have to flee on a self-made raft. In the end, they also take on the pilot of the downed plane, who introduces himself as a Lithuanian by the name of Pjotr ​​Klap , and then drifts helplessly around in the Red Sea . Muell Pasha reports the successful sinking of Tim and Captain Haddock's ship to Di Gorgonzola by radio.

They are discovered by Di Gorgonzola, of all people, who gives a costume ball on his luxury yacht . He hands them over to the Ramona's crew , who are said to be on their way to Mecca. However, it is also one of Di Gorgonzola's ships that was supposed to bring them to Watisdah, directly into the arms of Bab El Ehr. The captain on board is Allan , who was first officer on Haddock's ship in The Crab with the Golden Claws and who mutinied . He locks Tim and the captain in their cabin . During the night, fire broke out on board, prompting the crew to flee immediately, as there were weapons and ammunition on board.

Tim and the captain can break out of their bunk and put out the fire. They discover Africans in the loading hatch. These are on the way to Mecca for the Hajj . The captain takes command of the ship and wants to go to Mecca. On the way an Arab comes on board who wants to see the coal on board. The Ramona has not loaded any coal. When the Arab begins to examine one of the blacks, it becomes clear that he is a slave trader and that “coal” is just a code word for it. The captain chases the Arab out of the ship with the worst abuse.

The USS Los Angeles

Di Gorgonzola learns of this, sends out a small plane to locate the Ramona , and finally sends a submarine to sink the Ramona . Tim accidentally discovers the periscope before the submarine can send its torpedoes , so that the Ramona can avoid it again. Meanwhile, Tim manages to send a radio message to the USS Los Angeles , which then rushes to help and can just force the submarine to emerge with depth charges from aircraft. Di Gorgonzola's yacht is tracked down, but he himself, who is actually Tim's archenemy Rastapopoulos , manages to escape.

Back in Mühlenhof everything seems to have turned for the better: the slaves have been freed, Allan arrested, Ben Kalisch Ezab back in power and Abdallah has also returned home. General Alcazar has also successfully put himself back to power. Only Fridolin Kiesewetter bothers: he invited himself and his whole club of racing drivers to Mühlenhof.

people

What is particularly noticeable about this volume is that, in addition to the main characters, a large number of people from previous albums have a shorter or longer appearance. Including:

In addition, with the Lithuanian pilot Pjotr ​​Klap, another person will be introduced who will return to Sydney in the later album Flight 714 .

background

The story is a continuation of In the Realm of Black Gold , even if several volumes and several years were between these publications. Hergé had taken the motive, the illegal slave trade , from various newspaper reports of the time. Arab customers were supplied with slaves there. By clearly denouncing the slave trade, Hergé hoped to finally rid himself of the racist charge that he had been accused of since Tim in the Congo . He did not succeed in doing this, however, because in the first edition he spoke the Africans "gibberish French" in a form known as petit-nègre . This was revised in the later album version.

It goes without saying that Hergé and his team also attached great importance to authenticity in this volume. Hergé embarked on a sea voyage especially for the story in order to realistically reproduce the journey of the Ramona . Meanwhile, his employees, above all Roger Leloup , worked hard to get the various vehicles in this volume down on paper. A newspaper photograph of the British naval officer and MI6 diver Lionel Crabb , who died while spying on a Russian ship, inspired Hergé to write the scene in which a diver tries to set up a mine on the Ramona .

Both in the Mühlenhof and on Rastapopoulos' yacht Scheherazade there are some valuable paintings that Hergé cleverly incorporated. For example works by Pablo Picasso (page 38) or Joan Miró (page 53). Hergé himself owned works in this category with which he furnished his new country house in Brabant . He was also otherwise, not least thanks to his passion for comics, a lover of painting, especially the avant-garde.

Template for the cover picture: The raft of Medusa by Théodore Géricault

The planned title Hergé originally wanted to give the work was Les requins de la mer rouge (the sharks in the Red Sea). Various foreign language editions, including the English, are still listed under this title.

The title page - it shows Tim, the captain and Pyotr Klap on a raft, viewed through a telescope - is a direct allusion to Théodore Géricault's picture The Raft of the Medusa . In the tape itself, the allusion becomes even clearer. The captain falls into the water and reappears with a Medusa on his head, whereupon Tim mocks in the French original edition: "Now it has finally become the raft of the Medusa".

When coal on board was finished, Hergé was also exhausted. Although the division of labor in his studio relieved him of many duties, he could not recover as had been hoped. This time it was personal problems: his marriage was about to end and he was completely desperate. With the follow-up volume Tim in Tibet , he tries to overcome his crisis.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ The French word coke that stands here would actually have been translated more precisely as coke . At the time Hergé wrote the story, the word did not yet have the meaning of cocaine (neither in German nor in French).
  2. ↑ Compare this to petit-nègre

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