There’s one line from the chorus of the nautical anthem “Rule Britannia!” that always makes me cringe.

“Britons never will be slaves.”

Anybody who remembers reading of the 150 years of “press gangs,” rounding up civilian men in seaports or non-Navy vessels at sea, kidnapping them and forcing them into this dangerous service against their will, would think the Royal Navy choruses that belt that tune out are engaged in historical gaslighting.

The first movie most film fans learned of this brutish practice might have been, for generations, 1962’s “Damn the Defiant!” It’s got press gangs and lives upended by the practice, and sailors organizing against the life-threatening brutality of service in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.

It’s a slightly-less jingoistic, less harmonious version of the world more thrillingly recreated for Peter Weir’s magnificent version of the Patrick O’Brian “Master and Commander” novels, the TV version of the adventures of “Hornblower” and nothing at all like the jolly tars of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies.

And since it’s been a regular feature, rerun on TV since the mid-60s, it’s a version of that history that’s stuck.

The sturdy British director Lewis Gilbert, of a few James Bond films and “Educating Rita” fame, serves up a version of shipboard politics and combat under sail (Think “slow motion.”) in a film that flips the script on 1962’s “Mutiny on the Bounty.”

Here, it’s the first officer who is the hardcase who helps drive the already-organizing sailors to mutiny, and a respected but softer captain who might have a chance to head off the worst.

The film’s a mix of coastal Spanish sea scenes and port settings, and soundstage interiors, with rear-projection action added where needed. It’s 1962 state of the art, no doubt, and a bit stodgy in pacing, shot selection and editing. Movies today put you closer to the action and play up the visceral experience of a battle, or simply heeled-over and “cracking on” in a tall ship under full sail.

But there’s something to be said for the calms captured here, ships ghosting along on Mediterranean zephyrs and light onshore breezes. The film’s climax, a desperate battle against French frigates and a fireship in the fog, is almost stately if still as suspenseful as it needs to be (and not a whit more).

Alec Guinness plays Captain Crawford, a by-the-book skipper, unbending in “following orders” but leaning towards keeping “a happy ship” when it comes to the Royal Navy’s penchant for corporal punishment.

His new first officer, Lt. Scott-Padget (Dirk Bogarde) takes a sterner view, a barking martinet who threatens and flogs at will.

A liberal captain and a sadistic first officer is a recipe for conlict. Their struggle is over whose word will be law in striking a balance between a”disciplined” and “efficient” ship and keeping the crew placated with a “happy ship.”

Crawford’s already mentioned “food that event the rats won’t eat” and lower decks resembling “life on a prison hulk” to his commanding officer. He knows his crew is suffering.

We see those lower decks through the meetings and machinations of the crew, with the hulking Vizzard (Anthony Quayle) signing his mates up for a secretly-planned general fleet strike over working conditions, pay and the like.

“Why is everyone afraid of the word ‘mutiny?’ Spread the Gospel.” The idea is, if every ship joins in, “they can’t hang” the entire Royal Navy.

Over the course of a voyage from Spithead to Corsica, the liberal captain and his sadistic first officer will clash, the French will move on Italy and earn an alliance with Spain and the frigate H.M.S. Defiant will be tested.

Gilbert, who’d do three Bond films, was a bridge between a more old-fashioned style of movie and filmmaking, one that didn’t hide the technical artifice, and the improved effects of the late ’60s and ’70s. “Defiant” is a lot more of the former than the latter.

The action sequences can seem as if they’re in slow motion as large spars (masts and booms) slowly tumble to the deck and the cannon recoil resembles Errol Flynn-era naval artillery rather than the real thing.

But Guinness and Bogarde set off serious sparks in a feud that peaks with the first officer taking out his rage at his by-the-book chief by having the captain’s midshipman son (David Robinson) caned for one minor infraction after another.

With the younger officer being politically “connected” and capable of “breaking” any captain he’s under, Crawford has to take care with every move he makes.

“From now on, I shall take steps that astound you!” seems like an empty threat.

Whatever affection I had for this seafaring tale in my old-movies-on-TV youth, “Damn the Defiant!” is more of a decent-to-good film than a great one. The director of “Shirley Valentine” and “Alfie” was more at home with interpersonal dramas than large scale action. Gilbert’s Bond outings could be fun (“The Spy Who Loved Me”) but rarely managed the sledgehammered pacing or bloody-minded sizzle of the best pictures in that series.

Burning a real wooden ship to the waterline is still damned impressive over 50 years later. But it’s Bogarde, Guinness and Quayle who animate the film, force us to take sides and make “Damn the Defiant!” worthy of being called a “classic.”

Rating: “approved” (TV-PG, violence)

Cast: Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Quayle, Maurice Denham, Murray Melvin and Tom Bell.

Credits: Directed by Lewis Gilbert, scripted by Nigel Neale and Edmund H. North, based on a novel by Frank Tilsley . A Columbia release on Tubi, Amazon, Youtube, etc.

Running time: 1:40