Captain Haddock Hergé thought this was a perfect name for Tintin’s new mariner friend, and so Captain Haddock was born. There was a real 20th-century ship's master bearing this unlikely but appropriate surname: Captain Herbert Haddock had been the skipper of the famous White Star Line's passenger vessel "Olympic". He had also been temporarily at the helm of Olympic's even more famous sister ship "Titanic" before "Titanic" was officially handed over to White Star for her doomed 1912 maiden voyage. Another famous namesake, and a possible inspiration for the Captain's ancestor Sir Francis, was the English admiral Richard Haddock, a veteran of
Haddock beneath the cod's gill cover until it releases a new generation of offspring into the water. Reaching sizes up to , haddock is fished year-round. Some of the methods used are Danish seine nets, trawlers, long lines and fishing nets. The commercial catch of haddock in North America had declined sharply in recent years, but is now recovering, with recruitment rates running around where they historically were from the 1930s to 1960s. In the eastern Atlantic haddock is mainly exploited by mixed fisheries, being targeted with cod and whiting, especially by light trawlers from Scottish ports as well as seiners