The Sea Hawk was released in July 1940, and by the end of the year had brought in twice its $1.7 million production cost at the box office.

George MacDonald Fraser, in his book The Hollywood History of the World states that even though many actresses have played Queen Elizabeth, "it remains [Flora] Robson's part; she had the voice, the style, the authority, the sheer physical presence of Gloriana, and when she needed it, the hidden bitterness and tormented doubt."

London's Daily Express said the film made the case for England's struggle against Hitler "nearly as well as Mr. Churchill."

Along with That Hamilton Woman/Lady Hamilton (1941), this was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's favorite historical film.

Michael Curtiz started his career as an actor and director in his native Hungary in 1912. His first American film was a Dolores Costello silent, The Third Degree (1926), for Warner Brothers, the studio where he would work almost exclusively for the bulk of his career and have his greatest successes. Never considered among the greatest film artists of all time, Curtiz's career nevertheless produced some of the most entertaining and enduring movies of the 1930s and 1940s, including Marked Woman (1937), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Casablanca (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945), and the eleven movies he made starring Errol Flynn. His films after leaving Warners in the early 1950s include the historical epic The Egyptian (1954), the Elvis Presley vehicle King Creole (1958), and his last film, the John Wayne Western The Comancheros (1961). He died in 1962 at the age of 75.

Errol Flynn was born in Australia in 1909. His wild nature asserted itself at an early age, and he was thrown out of every school he was enrolled in. He went through a wide range of youthful occupations before dabbling in acting by playing the famous mutineer Fletcher Christian in the Australian film In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). His good looks, obvious charm, and great athletic ability caught the eye of Warner Brothers, and he was soon signed to a contract, playing a handful of forgettable small roles until he was a last-minute, risky replacement for well-known actor Robert Donat in Captain Blood (1935). It was Flynn's first pairing with director Michael Curtiz, and he became an overnight sensation in the kind of carefree swashbuckler role with which he'd always be associated. He became one of the studio's biggest stars for the next decade, alternating between period adventures, Westerns, and, with less success, sophisticated comedies. His career waned after World War II, and his hard life of drinking, fighting, sailing, and amorous scandals began to take its toll on his looks and abilities. When he died at the age of 50 in 1959 from a massive heart attack, he appeared to be a much older man.

Vienna-born Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy who composed his first orchestral piece at the age of 14. His first opera, Die tote Stadt, completed in 1920 at the age of 23, was an international success. A composer in the Romantic vein, he was highly respected by the mid-1930s when he came to Hollywood first to adapt Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and again to compose the score for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), which earned him an Academy Award. That trip was fortuitous; while in America, Hitler invaded Austria, and Korngold and his family were safe from the fate that befell his fellow Jews. He received further Academy Award nominations for The Sea Hawk and another Flynn vehicle, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). After the war he tried unsuccessfully to return to his work on operas and orchestral compositions because the vogue for his style of music had passed, but his early work has come back into favor in the years since. He retired from film work in 1947 and died ten years later at the age of 60.

London-born Claude Rains was a distinguished and respected actor whose long career (1920-1965) included a variety of roles on stage, screen, and television as leads, villains, and various supporting characters. He was mostly unseen but unforgettable in his first American film, The Invisible Man (1933), and was nominated four times for Best Supporting Actor. Rains made a total of 10 feature films and one short under the direction of Michael Curtiz.

Warners contractee Brenda Marshall had only been in the movies a year when she was given her big break in a role intended for Olivia de Havilland in The Sea Hawk. She worked with Errol Flynn again in Footsteps in the Dark (1941) and once more under Michael Curtiz's direction in Captains of the Clouds (1942). She retired from films after The Iroquois Trail (1950). Marshall always hated her studio-given name and preferred to be called by her real first name, Ardis. She was married to William Holden from 1941 to 1971; by all accounts, it was an unhappy union marked by frequent and lengthy separations and mutual extra-marital affairs.

Sol Polito was one of the pioneer cinematographers of the industry and a significant contributor to the Warner Brothers style of the 1930s and '40s. He began his career in 1914 and retired in 1949. His work includes such Warner classics as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), 42nd Street (1933), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Sergeant York (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942). When the studio added big-budget period adventures to its usual roster of gritty urban dramas, Polito was at the forefront, working in both lush black-and-white and the then difficult three-strip Technicolor process. In this vein, he was responsible for the look of many of the great Errol Flynn action pictures: The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Prince and the Pauper (1937), The Adventures of Robin Hood (which featured some of the finest color work of its time), and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (his first Oscar® nomination). He also worked on several of Flynn's Westerns––Dodge City (1939), Virginia City (1940), Santa Fe Trail (1940)––and with director Michael Curtiz 14 times. Polito died in 1960 at the age of 67.

Award-winning screenwriter Howard Koch contributed to a number of top films of the 1940s, including The Letter (1940), Sergeant York (1941), Casablanca (1942), and Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). He was blacklisted in the 1950s for alleged communist ties and thereafter wrote under the pseudonym Peter Howard and occasionally accepted work in Europe.

Both Michael Curtiz and Errol Flynn had been married to the same woman, French actress Lili Damita. Curtiz and Damita were married for only a year (1925-26). She and Flynn were married from 1935 to 1942 and they had one son, Sean Flynn, an actor and journalist who was captured and likely executed in 1970 by either Viet Cong or Khmer Rouge while covering the war in Southeast Asia.

The Sea Hawk was re-released in 1947 on a double bill with Warners The Sea Wolf (1941) and did booming business again. Around 15-20 minutes was cut out of the film, mostly scenes involving Donald Crisp's character; they were restored later.

by Rob Nixon

Memorable Quotes from THE SEA HAWK

CREW MEMBER ON THORPE'S SHIP: You ever see a Spaniard the captain couldn't swallow whole?

CARL PITT: It'll be just like that Spaniard to surrender and spoil all our fun.

CAPTAIN THORPE: By now you know the purpose of the Sea Hawks. In our own way, we serve England and the Queen.

BEN ROLLINS: I hear her majesty's the only woman he could ever talk up to without his knees bucklin'.
DANNY LOGAN: That's different. Man-to-man, I calls it!

QUEEN ELIZABETH: So you have taken it upon yourself to remedy the defects of Spanish justice?

KING PHILIP OF SPAIN: With England conquered, nothing can stand in our way. Northern Africa; Europe as far east as the Urals; then the New World: to the north, to the south, west to the Pacific. Over the Pacific to China and to the Indies will our empire spread. One day, before my death, we shall sit here and gaze at this map upon the wall. It will have ceased to be a map of the world. It will be Spain.

WOLFINGHAM: We serve others best when at the same time we serve ourselves.

QUEEN ELIZABETH: A grave duty confronts us all: To prepare our nation for a war that none of us wants....When the ruthless ambition of a man threatens to engulf the world, it becomes the solemn obligation of all free men to affirm that the earth belongs not to any one man, but to all men, and that freedom is the deed and title to the soil on which we exist.