Tyrant of the Sea Tyrant of the Sea Tyrant of the Sea is a 1950 American historical war film directed by Lew Landers and starring Ron Randell, Rhys Williams and Lester Matthews. It is set during the Napoleonic Wars, with Admiral Horatio Nelson appearing as a character. The film began as a project "The Return of Captain Bligh" and was to star Charles Laughton, who had famously played Captain Bligh in "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935). However Laughton did not want to repeat his performance so the project was rewritten to focus on a fictitious character. Rhys Williams played the part based on Bligh.
Charles Laughton days shooting asked to be released from the part and was replaced by W. C. Fields. Back in the UK, and again with Korda, he played the title role in "Rembrandt" (1936). In 1937, also for Korda, he starred in an ill-fated film version of the classic novel, "I, Claudius", by Robert Graves, which was abandoned during filming owing to the injuries suffered by co-star Merle Oberon in a car crash. After "I, Claudius", he and the expatriate German film producer Erich Pommer founded the production company Mayflower Pictures in the UK, which produced three films starring Laughton: "Vessel of