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
Herbert Haddock from his assignment in Belfast. From 5 to 14 May 1917, Haddock sailed from Liverpool to New York City aboard the SS "Saint Paul", six months before she was taken over for wartime service. The voyage's manifest shows that Haddock's trip was funded by the Admiralty, and states that his final destination was Newport News, Virginia, where he would be received by the British Navy. According to the 1917 ship's manifest, Haddock had not been back to the United States since 1914. It is not thought that Haddock returned to the White Star Line after the war. Haddock died in