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
Captain Haddock the Picaros", when Professor Calculus 'cures' him of his taste for alcohol. In the adventure "Secret of the Unicorn" (and continuing in "Red Rackham's Treasure") he and Tintin travel to find a pirate's treasure captured by his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock (François de Hadoque in French). With newfound wealth and regaining his ancestral home Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock becomes a socialite; riding a horse, wearing a monocle, and sitting in a theatre box seat ("The Seven Crystal Balls"). He then evolves to become genuinely heroic, volunteering to sacrifice his life to save Tintin's own in the pivotal "Tintin in Tibet".