He's gonna scuttle the ship!

OK, time for a diversion from politics. One of my favorite movies, The Hunt for Red October, is out now on Blu-Ray and I might pick it up with my trusty Best Buy rewards certificate. It's an excellent film in which you don't hate Alec Baldwin and in which Scotsman Sean Connery plays a Russian submarine captain. You can tell he's Russian because he speaks 2-3 sentences in the movie in Russian and he wears a fuzzy hat sometimes and has a beard and access to vodka.

Anyway.

The best part in the movie is when Ramius (Connery) announces his intention to submerge Red October (the submarine) and 'scuttle the ship.' This causes all manner of reaction from his crew (some anonymous bearded guys and Tim Curry), who react with marvel upon the announcement of his intended scuttling. The great thing is that the movie never once explains to the audience what that means. It assumes everyone watching the movie is a full-time naval officer or submarine engineer.

Even to this day I have no idea what it means to scuttle something, and I don't want to look it up so I don't ruin it. Personally I'm just fine believing that scuttling has something to do with giving the submarine a bubble bath.