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Channel 4
2 x 60’ drama-documentaries for June 2010
Two heart-thumping, all-action adventures at the epicenter of two iconic moments in British history; telling a familiar story from a fresh and diverse perspective:
Nelson famously signalled: ‘England Expects that Every Man will Do his Duty’. But of the 18,000 sailors fighting for King and Country, 1,400 of them were not British at all. The Royal Navy was the world’s first equal opportunities employer, offering freedom, equal pay, and promotion irrespective of race or religion.
By analysing the records of HMS Bellerophon, this film has pieced together the story of a cross-section of Nelson’s foreign navy - including West Indian slaves, a Danish Prisoner of War, a Swede liberated from bondage in Muslim North Africa, a Maltese, an Indian, five Dutch and thirteen Americans.
The Admiralty promised them all a fair share of any captured enemy ships. But between these brave sailors, and a potentially life-changing fortune, stood the bloodiest battle in naval history – and the greatest storm the seas had ever seen. What choices would Bellerophon’s foreigners make?
Every schoolchild learns 3 things about the Great Fire: It started at a baker’s in Pudding Lane. It was a terrible accident. And hardly anyone died. But that’s not how the people of London saw things in 1666. Reeling from plague and war, Londoners believed the fire was started on purpose, by foreign enemies in their midst.
For several apocalyptic days and nights, as the city burned to the ground, London hunted these foreign fire-starters. And by the time the Fire had subsided, London had found its incendiary alien, from whom the raging mob demanded their pound of flesh.
Rooted in contemporary sources which catapult the viewer directly into the mood of London’s combustible streets, “Bloody Foreigners: Great Fire” reveals the dirty truth behind one of our sacred historical icons.
BBC Northern Ireland
60’ documentary for Autumn 2010
In 1849 a famine-ravaged Armagh community made a choice – between remaining in their homes, with their children, to die of starvation – or spending their last pennies to set sail for Canada in search of a new life.
Those who chose to make the journey across the Atlantic endured scarcely imaginable hardship on their path to freedom. But none so terrifying as the iceberg which met their ship, the Hannah, in the Gulf of St Lawrence. In just two hours, in the middle of the night, this famine ship sank to the bottom of the ocean. But the passengers on board made a leap for the ice – and survived.
A century and a half later, on an extraordinary and emotional journey, their modern descendants – a young family from Armagh - will retrace the steps of their ancestors and piece together this remarkable tale of starvation and shipwreck and emigration.
