 The film took its inspiration from an incident which occurred in  1972 when a man claimed he had planted a bomb on board the QE2 and  demanded a ransom. Cunard were prepared to pay the ransom, but the  British Government decided instead to send in soldiers of the  Special Boat Service who parachuted into the North Atlantic 1000  miles from the UK and boarded the QE2 to search for the device. The  threat turned out to be a hoax and the FBI later caught the culprit.