John "Pugwash" Ryan, R.I.P.

I've just heard on the news that John Ryan, the British animator, died today at the age of 88. He created one of the best-loved children’s television programmes of the 1970s Captain Pugwash. The eponymous hero – Captain Horatio Pugwash – sails the high seas in his ship called the Black Pig, ably assisted by cabin boy Tom, pirates Willy and Barnabas, and Master Mate. His mortal enemy is Cut-Throat Jake, captain of the Flying Dustman.

Captain Pugwash started as a comic strip in The Eagle in 1950. The BBC then commissioned the first TV series in 1957-1967. This TV series was beautifully crafted with a unique real-time animating technique called “captions”. Captions were basically cardboard cutouts of the characters laid on painted backgrounds which were pinned/glued/sellotaped to cardboard levers to make the figures "move". About 50 or so captions were made for each episode, and took over a fortnight to make.

The TV series was revived in 1975 in colour and again reanimated in 1997 (see last picture) and also made into children's books. In 1991 Ryan sued The Guardian and the Sunday Correspondent for wrongly accusing the series of having sexually suggestive names – such as Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy. These double entendres were all incorrect and actually made up by university students in the 70s for “rag mags”, and somehow became urban myths.