Some four miles off the Pacific shoreline his command, HMS Surprise, awaits us, and Mr. Crowe is concerned that his nervous-looking guest might be a little queasy once on board this life-size replica of an early 19th-century British man-o’-war. "Have you taken your seasick pill?" he barks. Yes. "You’ve got your anti-seasick wristband?" Yes. Two, On both wrists. "Good. And your anti-seasick patch?" Total Film leans forward to let him check the back of its neck, which is "patched up to buggery", to use his phrase. "All right then. Just remember, if none of this works, don’t puke when the cameras are rolling. It’ll fuck up the shot..."

The brawling, journo-hating Crowe of tabloid legend can induce a little apprehension in those who haven’t met him before. Yet throughout Total Film’s four days on set with him, observing his interaction with the rest of tile cast and crew, it’s clear that his friendship can easily he earned, no matter what your profession. Although he expects the same in return: trust, respect and commitment. Hardly surprising, then, that despite the fact he taught himself to play the violin (Aubrey’s chosen method of relaxation) and spent most of the shoot in costume, it didn’t require much Method immersion to get Crowe into the mindset of a firm-but-fair captain.

And he certainly looks the part. His shoulder- length, dyed-blond hair is pulled hack into a ponytail. His fine white-linen dress shirt is ruffled and fancy and his boots are long in the leg over tight-fitting britches. Nearby, a dark-blue dress coat is draped over a chair as Crowe munches on cereal in the Panache’s opulent dining room.

But if Captain Jack’s days at sea, as meticulously portrayed in the late Patrick O’Brian’s 20 popular novels, were never quite like this, Crowe himself is perfectly at home. And so he should be. The Panache is his temporary abode when filming is out on the ocean, as opposed to Fox Studios’ giant water tank in Rosarito, where another replica of HMS Surprise and her French enemy, the Acheron , sit ready and waiting for his return.

For a man about to go into battle -- albeit for the cameras -- Crowe’s remarkably relaxed. And patch, wristband and pill-free, no less, "No, I’ve not been sick," he says as the cruiser leaps up and down like a fairground ride. "I did some basic sea training before I left Sydney. And then I joined a yacht sailing in the Bahamas, but we had some bad luck there and hit a very large storm and I didn’t get as much sailing in as I was hoping to."

The first day on the ocean was the most testing for Crowe, director Peter Weir, and his "crew," which includes Paul Bettany (Crowe’s Princeton roommate in A Beautiful Mind), The Lord Of The Rings’ Billy Boyd and a mostly British roster of supports. "We were out for about 20 hours that day. I think we went a bit further than we intended. And pretty much everybody got sick except about half-a-dozen of us," Crowe says. (Although to a man, no one Total Film speaks to during its four days admits to having a chunder. ) "In between scenes I was actually doing my thing, helping people transfer from the smaller craft on to the Surprise, and I guess somewhere along the way I’d got my sea legs. By the way, you’ll enjoy the transfer..."

Ah yes, "the transfer. As Surprise moves into view, we take a trip out on deck to get a better look at her. One-hundred-and-fifty-seven-feet long. 28-feet wide. 138-feet tall and shaped like a giant wooden teardrop, this three-masted frigate was employed mostly as an educational training ship and floating museum until 20th Century Fox paid a reported 81.5 million for her. A good investment if there are sequels. She looks wonderful, basking in sunlight and anchored on thankfully calm waters. But she is still rather a long way from us, perhaps 800 yards away, and it’s at this point that Total Film wonders, no make that worries, about "the transfer."

This involves a small speedboat taking from tile Panache to the Surprise, where we have to climb a swaying rope ladder. Crowe scampers up; he’s done it so many times he barely pauses. Then he remembers his flailing passenger. "Come on, son. Put your bag over your back. Hold on tight and don’t look down …"

We land, with a thud, on deck and suddenly it’s 1805. Virtually everyone -- cast and crew, the real sailors who steer the ship -- is in costume. "That way, if anyone is in shot it doesn’t matter," explains Crowe, as we settle below decks for a cup of tea, several cigarettes and a chance to talk about why he chose this role from the multitude on offer after his third Oscar nomination for A Beautiful Mind. Above us, a red-faced, straw- hat-sporting Peter Weir is preparing for a scene where Aubrey gives a farewell speech to one of his officers. Down here, the ship’s creaking and groaning so much it sounds like the Pacific Ocean is about to join us...

When Crowe was first approached to take the role of Aubrey, he turned it down. As far as he was concerned, the script wasn’t right. But he couldn’t get the idea of working with fellow antipodean Weir -- the award-winning director who helmed Picnic At Hanging Rock, Fearless and, most recently The Truman Show -- out of his head. "I would wake in the middle of the night saying to myself. What are you doing turning down an opportunity that every actor in the world worth his salt would simply say yes to? And there are very few directors like that: Kubrick before he passed away. Scorsese, and definitely Peter. So it kind of got me back on the phone to him again. We met up at a place I had in Elizabeth Bay in Sydney, and sat out on the balcony, overlooking the marina, which is a ridiculously opportune place to have a conversation about this film."

There, Weir sold him on the complex character that is ‘Lucky’ Jack Aubrey, a man of action respected by his men, a lover of the seafaring life, whose "callused, thickened hands" play the violin as an escape from the pressures of an increasingly complicated world. "I was seduced," says Crowe with a smile.

For the director, Crowe was always his Captain Jack. According to Weir, "Russell always had the captain potential about him. He just has that authority, on screen and off."

Crowe chuckles when Total Film puts this to him, but he doesn’t disagree. "The first day of rehearsals, I gave ever man in the cast name tags. a length of thread and a needle." He recalls. "They had 12 hours to report back in uniform with a name tag sewn on. There we’re a couple who did a sloppy job. They were talked to,

"But it wasn’t for ego," he insists. "I just felt that the experience would be bigger and better if we all allowed ourselves to play the game." And it seemed to work, too. "About six weeks into the shoot," Crowe continues, "I had a letter from one of the lads who plays a midshipman. We had a function going on and his brother was over from England. He wanted his brother to come with him and the letter finished: From your obliged and humble servant, always willing to die in your service..,’ And I thought, ‘We are definitely in the mould that we need to be in..."

Others have been less convinced by Cap’n Crowe. Patrick O’Brian’s fans, who were already concerned that Weir had chosen to splice the plot of their idol’s first book, Master And Commander, with his 10th, The Far Side Of The World, also changing the latter’s rogue American whaler to a French ship that engages our hero and his crew in a deadly game of cat and mouse. More importantly for the fans, though, the Aubrey of the novels is a large fellow who balloons to 17 stone, leading to them carping that Crowe wasn’t physically big enough for the part.

However, Crowe was happy to put on weight for the role, "I was going down the road of playing Jack with all the physicality has in the books, Yeah, the larder door was open and I was really enjoying myself," he laughs." But then Peter had a change of mind and said, ‘You know what? I don’t want to go into that area.’ He said, ‘I want Jack as a competent man. A man who is all over the ship, who knows every part of it and is physically capable when we meet him. If we end up making 20 movies, we can degrade and age as we go along but at the beginning we should have him, if not young, then at least fit and strong.’ So I pulled it back a bit.

Up on deck, they’re ready for the captain and he moves upstairs with a "G’day" and a "How are ya. mate," to the crew and cast he passes. Billy Boyd is at the ship’s wheel, and while he hardly looks big enough to turn it, he spins it like a veteran. Like most of the cast, Boyd attended sea training in San Diego before filming started. And like all of them who hadn’t worked with Crowe before, he wondered what to expect of the star.

"I’d seen Russell at a couple of these award things but I’d never really met him," Boyd says. "But for some reason I had a feeling that I’d like him. He seemed like a down-to-earth, normal guy... Who just happens to be one of the biggest cinema stars of our generation! But, really, it turns out that’s what he is. He’s a guy who likes to play rugby and likes to have a laugh with you. You know, a real carry-on between shots, lots of patter and nonsense. We’ve had a laugh and when you think of the kind of pressure he’s under -- fronting a film like this after starring in some of the biggest movies of the last five years -- he must be under stress. But you never see it."

Crowe admits he does have concerns, his primary one being to keep things authentic as possible. Fiddling with fiddles is one thing, but climbing the rigging to the very top is entirely another. He could have bowed out and left the shot to a stunt double. He didn’t. "The point is, if somebody else does it, it takes away the opportunity for the director to have a 100 percent shot. So we came up with the idea of this shot from the top of the main mast. That’s 137ft. Quite a swell." A brown-trouser moment? "No, not at all. You just do it. And my thought process is not anything other than, ‘What is the shot going to look like?’ and what the character would be comfortable with. I mean, Rule No. l: hold on. It’s as simple as that, get about your business.

"You see, this character has been at sea since he was nine years old and has served on this same ship once before when he was a younger man. He knows every inch of the ship and he’s an involved captain, he’s part of the pursuit, he’s not objective, he’s the one driving it. That’s his love. So all of those things mean you should be as involved as you can be."

And that’s the key, he says. "Otherwise what’s the point?" It’s also about team spirit. And if you are playing a Royal Navy captain who commands the respect of his men, then team spirit should be present and correct at all times.

Each Sunday, the only guaranteed day off during the five-month shoot, Crowe organized rugby games. Twenty, 30 cast and crew would turn up and be kitted out with national strips -- All Blacks, Aussies, Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland — provided by the leading man. "It’s a good way to get to know people. he says. "It breaks down barriers and we have a laugh. And a few beers and a barbie afterwards. Why not?

It undoubtedly helped keep morale up during a physically demanding shoot-- during Total Film's 96--hour stint, Crowe and co hit the sack no later than 11 pm every night. But this was nothing compared with the storm scenes, when Surprise has to navigate the death trap of Cape Horn. Crowe insists these were comparable with his most grueling days on Gladiator. Two jet engines provided howling winds, along with huge industrial fans, and giant dump tanks pounded him with thousands of gallons of water.

"We started doing it and it didn’t seem big enough," he says. "It wasn’t a furious enough storm for Peter so he asked, ‘What can we do?’ And they brought in these two jet engines. One wasn’t enough for Peter. You’re standing there, doing your dialogue a few metres away from these engines, with the fans blowing, with water hoses on top of them, and there’s just water and more water. And from two feet a you can’t hear what the other actor is saying so you have to have it well rehearsed. That went on for 11 days."

He’s not complaining though. Peter Weir is a perfectionist and so is Crowe. Their joint mantra is: get on with it and tackle the problems when they arise. And prepare, always prepare. Just like when Crowe made sure Total Film was protected against seasickness. And it worked -- not even a trace of bile all day. Crowe seems disappointed. "Mate, that was an easy day he grins. "Come back tomorrow and we’ll see how you get on…"
(Thanks to Gloria)

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