Watch Your Stern (1960) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

After accidentally spilling his drink on the secret torpedo plans, Blissworth tried to dry them by hanging them in front of a heater. This backfired badly when the heat burned a hole directly through the critical diagram, destroying the only copy of the secret plans and setting off the frantic chain of cover-up events.

Foreshadowing: The earlier scene where Blissworth gives technical torpedo lectures establishes his expertise with these documents, making his clumsy accident more ironic.

• secret plans
• heater damage
• Blissworth
• cover-up
• burned diagram

With the Admiral demanding to see the torpedo plans and the only surviving copy en route to London with the American Commander, Blissworth needed to stall. By pretending to be Professor Potter, the visiting scientist expected to review the plans, he could keep the Admiral occupied and prevent discovery of the damaged documents.

• disguise
• Professor Potter
• impersonation
• Admiral
• stalling

When the real scientist telephoned that she would be late, the crew discovered their disguise was based on incorrect assumptions, Professor Potter was actually Agatha Potter, a woman. This forced Blissworth to abandon his male professor disguise and rapidly re-dress as Agatha Potter to maintain the deception.

• Agatha Potter
• gender confusion
• disguise
• scientist

Blissworth was dispatched on a bicycle to catch the American Commander who had the only surviving plan, but he was stopped at the dock gate by bureaucratic rules, he had no pass to leave the ship. This delay allowed the Commander to reach London with the plan and forced the crew to resort to increasingly elaborate schemes.

• bicycle
• pass
• bureaucratic rules
• interception failed

Navy regulations dictated that crew members could only have either a completely clean-shaven face or full whiskers, nothing in between. When Blissworth's glued-on beard left him partially whiskered, Mundy was ordered to remove the remaining facial hair to resolve the appearance violation, adding another layer of comic pressure to maintain the disguise.

• Mundy
• shaving
• naval regulations
• appearance rules
• whiskers

After being exposed at Admiralty House when the real Agatha Potter called, Blissworth used the chaos to escape. He convinced the returning American Commander to give him a ride back to the ship, during which he retrieved the correct torpedo plan from the Commander's briefcase and returned to HMS Terrier before the Admiral arrived.

• American Commander
• plan recovery
• Admiralty House
• escape

Despite causing the disaster, Blissworth demonstrated genuine technical insight when he interrupted the Admiral and professor to point out a design flaw in the torpedo. His practical knowledge from years of torpedo work impressed the real professor enough to offer him a position collaborating on the weapon's development.

• Blissworth
• professor
• collaboration
• torpedo design
• hired

The acoustic torpedo was designed to home in on sound signatures. During the test firing, the torpedo detected the HMS Terrier's own engine noise as its target, causing it to circle back and explode the ship that launched it. This catastrophic failure served as the film's comic punchline, despite all the effort to save the plans, the weapon destroyed the very ship it was meant to protect.

• acoustic torpedo
• test failure
• homing device
• explosion
• own ship

Blissworth's disguise was remarkably thorough, he wore a glued-on beard, glasses, and performed a Scottish accent convincingly enough to fool the Admiral. Additionally, the pressure of the situation and the Admiral's desperation to see the plans made him less skeptical than he might have been under normal circumstances.

• Admiral Pettigrew
• disguise
• beard
• Scottish accent
• deception

When the real Agatha Potter finally arrived at thedockyard, she was mistaken for an imposter and arrested as a suspected spy. The comedy of errors meant that the genuine scientist was detained while the impostor Blissworth had already escaped, adding another layer to the farcical misunderstanding.

• Agatha Potter
• arrested
• spy
• mistaken identity