Nate and Hayes (1983)

Captain Bully Hayes (Tommy Lee Jones) arrives on a beach with his crew.  They hack through the jungle and find their way to a native village to sell rifles.  The natives prove unwilling to pay and suddenly Bully and his crew must flee for their lives.  Only Bully escapes but he is immediately captured by his old nemesis, Ben Pease (Max Phipps), and a contingent of Spanish soldiers.  Awaiting his execution, he details the events that led him to his doom.

Sailing on the Rona 18 months earlier, Bully had transported Nathaniel Williams (Michael O'Keefe) and his fiancé, Sophie (Jenny Seagrove), to a South Pacific island where they will be missionaries.  Nate's aunt and uncle are already on the island.  They explain that Bully Hayes is a notorious pirate and blackbirder (slave trader) and that Nate is lucky to be alive.  During Nate and Sophie's wedding, blackbirders attack the island.  Left for dead, Nate awakens to find that his aunt and uncle are dead while Sophie and most of the islanders are missing.  He suspects Bully Hayes.  In fact, it was Ben Pease, Captain of the Leonora.  Pease is working for a German Count who is trying to secure a harbor for the German Empire in the South Pacific.  Before long, Nate and Hayes are allies determined to rescue Sophie and kill Ben Pease.

The movie takes place around 1870 and has an opening reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The scene where he cut the rope bridge looked like it was stolen from Temple of Doom but this movie came out first!  And Sophie being lowered into fire as a sacrifice also looked like a scene from Temple of Doom.  Hey, what's up with that?  Tommy Lee Jones is excellent as Hayes but Michael O'Keefe is poorly cast.  His transition from naïve missionary to battle-hardened buccaneer is unconvincing.  In one scene he is a bumbling oaf and in the next he is an action hero.  Weak.

This is an entertaining but entirely fictional account of an actual person.  William Henry "Bully" Hayes (1827-1877) was an American who sailed the Pacific.  Though not technically a pirate, he was a conman, a thief, a swindler, a blackbirder, and a bigamist.  He did sail a ship named the Rona from 1866 to 1869.  Of note, he sailed with fellow blackbirder Ben Pease (1834-1870) on a voyage to China.  When he returned, he offered a story about Ben retiring in China and thus he was now the owner of the brig Pioneer.  Hmm.  He renamed this ship Leonora.

The movie reminded me of Tales of the Gold Monkey, which takes place in the same region only 70 years later.  Also, it aired in 1982-83, just when this movie came out.  Not great but fun.