Lost and Found: The Story of Cook's Anchor

The lost and found David Lean film, at least in the sense of this being the rarest and least seen of David Lean's films. In this 1978 South Pacific Television documentary short 'told by David Lean' the epic film director recounts how, whilst scouting locations in Tahiti for a film of 'The Mutiny on the Bounty' with writer Robert Bolt and property master Eddie Fowlie, they discovered the lost anchor of Captain James Cook's ship 'HMS Adventure', abandoned to the seabed in 1773 ("I'm bloody sure it's Cook's" says shipwreck museum curator and diver Kelly Tarlton). Raising the anchor causes a 'snow storm' thanks to a compressor, and, once it reaches the surface, it's greeted with garlands from local Tahiti women swimming through the water (which Cook's artists used to imagine as sea nymphs). Photographed by Ken Dorman and Lynton Diggle (underwater), it's a competently made documentary (with reenacted scenes), but of marginal interest, mainly to historians and Lean completists.