RED RACKHAM'S TREASURE
Captain Haddock is superstitious, but does that mean Hergé is, too?
Well,
you never know what there is to it.You have to watch these things before they start growing on you.
Is that a coconut? Blow me down!
It's the inner nut after you remove the outer shell.
No way Hergé has ever seen them grow on a tree.
Never noticed this myself until I read about it in the short story Depth Charge! by C.S. Forester, in the Gold from Crete collection:
"At anything more than a slight inclination from the vertical, the protecting air would bubble out, the water pour in,
and at that pressure he would be drowned in a flash."
It's rare for Hergé not to have researched this better.
From The Secret of The Unique Porn
Here, the coordinates of Rackham's treasure island are given, as you can see: 20°37'42.0"N 70°52'15.0"W.
However, in Part 2: Red Rackham's Treasure it turns out that Hadoque has not been using the Greenwich but the Paris meridian,
which makes the location 20°37'42.00"N- 68°31'19.32"W.
Almost needless to say, there's no island there. Worse, the sea is over 5000m (16,500ft) deep there.
Google Earth image
Girasol, Calculus, Zonnebloem was a professor maybe
but not much of a scientist.
A tinkerer with gadgets is a much more accurate description. Here, guided by his trusty pendulum, he enters the basement where Tintin and Haddock have just found the treasure.Copyright by Hergé
Throughout the book, he keeps picking up signs that the treasure is located "West... always to the West" while it isn't there at all.
Still, he finds it in the end, misguided or not. Proof that his pendulum really works? Not that it's of any use.
Now that's pseudo-science for you.
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