Thursday 27th July. 2.30 PM – ‘H’ Stage, Shepperton Studios. The final part of our fireships sequence today as a burning ship collides with a Spanish galleon.

Arranging for two ships to collide out of water on a sound stage is no mean feat so this is a big day for our special effects team. Our main ship can’t collide with anything as it’s bolted to the ground on a gimble so to simulate it crashing into a galleon we’ve built a section of Spanish ship on a steel frame which will be accelerated into the front of our fireship by a large fork-lift truck. Now all the team need to do is ensure that the ships hit just as the gimble reaches the centrepoint and that the stuntmen on the deck dive away from the figurehead as it crashes through the side just in time. Of course all this has to be done with the deck and sails of the fireship ablaze and the wind machines at full tilt. And it’s a stunt we can only do once. It should be an interesting afternoon.