...hold tight…
Paravane – For Your Eyes Only (1981)
When Kristatos captures James Bond and Melina Havelock off coast of Corfu in the Ionian Sea, he has them tied together and fastened to a paravane which is then towed by his yacht, a Panther class vessel, the Santa Mavra. Bond and Melina are dragged through the shark infested waters and over sharp coral that rips the skin. On a pause as Kristatos circles the Santa Marva around to drag the pair back over the coral again, Bond swims down to the ocean floor and cuts the rope binding his hands against sharp coral. Surviving a second pass, Bond wraps the tow line from the Paravane around a coral head. When the Santa Marva throttles up and pulls the line taut, the thick rope snaps. The Paravane flies from the water, becoming a guided missile that knocks one of the crew into the shark-infested waters.
The concept of a paravane has existed for centuries. It is a device designed to be towed, but generally not directly behind a ship. Due to its fin shaped design, it will travel out at an angle. Commercial fishermen used paravanes in certain kinds of net-fishing long before the steamship era and the coining of the word. A more modern application was invented by British naval personal during World War One, and this is when the word was introduced. “Paravane” is defined as “a torpedo-shaped protective device with serrate teeth in its forward end used underwater by a ship in mined areas to sever the moorings of mines,” but the word has been adopted by many to define any kind of “water-kite” that sails out to the side of the boat that is towing it. Indeed, so secret was the mine-sweeping paravane, that while invented in 1914, the Admiralty banned all usage of the word over the telephone or in dispatches. The first known public use of the word regarding minesweeping applications was some five years later in 1919.
The (so-called) keelhauling1 scene had up to now, been an orphaned set piece in the Bond films. Originally crafted in Ian Fleming’s novel Live and Let Die (1954), it had been in and out of numerous scripts.
The scene shot off the coast of New Providence Island (Nassau) involved underwater stunts performed by Gavin McKinney and Frances Young doubling for Bond and Melina. Remarkably, very few precautions were taken in the filming. McKinney and Young had no safety release from the tow line, and the pilot of the boat pulling them had to estimate the agreed-upon safe path through the unforgiving coral. McKinney and Young both suffered cuts, but, as McKinney recalled in 2007, nothing that required a trip to the hospital.
In 2022, collector Alan Stephenson purchased the Paravane at auction. In due time, he agreed to donate it to the Ian Fleming Foundation. Weighing well over 100 lbs, and measuring approximately six feet in length, it became a powerful weapon that 007 was able to turn on his enemy.
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1. While this scene is often called a “keelhauling,” (even by Mr. Big in the novel Live and Let Die) a true definition involved dragging someone underwater across the keel of the ship where there skin is generally ripped deeply by barnacles growing on the hull.