| “ | I miss the peace of fishing like when I was a boy. Forty years I've been at sea. A war at sea. A war with no battles, no monuments... only casualties. I widowed her the day I married her. My wife died while I was at sea, you know. | „ |
| ~ Marko Ramius |
Captain Marko Alexandrovich Ramius was a protagonist of the novel The Hunt For Red October and the film based on the novel.
In the film he was portrayed by the late Sean Connery, who also played John Patrick Mason in The Rock, Henry Jones Sr. in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Allan Quatermain in the film adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and was the first man to play James Bond.
Bio[]
Born in Lithuania, Ramius was raised by his paternal grandfather, who was a fisherman. Knowing the ways of the sea from an early age, he embarked upon a career in the Soviet navy which spanned over 40 years. He had married but lost his wife to ovarian cancer, a condition that was exacerbated by the state of the Soviet health care system. One of the top submarine officers, he commanded the lead boat in every submarine class for over a decade.
Having no other family in the Soviet Union, Ramius decided to defect after seeing the plans for Red October and realizing it could upset the balance of power between the US and the USSR. Ramius was also disgusted with a political system that allowed the incompetent doctor whose negligence resulted in the death of his wife to escape any sort of punishment. Ramius was able to recruit a number of officers to his side who also wanted to defect, and had them assigned to the Red October. Before leaving he sent his late wife's uncle Admiral Yuri Padorin a letter explaining that he was defecting, committing Ramius and his officers to their cause and making it impossible to return to the USSR.
Leaving the USSR, Ramius was able to make contact with a US submarine, the USS Dallas. CIA agent Jack Ryan was onboard and able to determine that the Soviets were lying when they said Ramius was a madman determined to launch his missiles on the United States. Despite the efforts of GRU agent Igor Loginov and fellow submarine Captain Viktor Tupolov, Ramius and the other defecting officers were able to defeat both antagonists, and successfully deliver the Red October to the US in a way where the Soviets believed Ramius and his officers had died. Wreckage from a Soviet submarine was soon discovered where the Red October had last been seen. The Americans led the Soviets to believe that it was wreckage from Ramius's ship, but in reality it was the remains of Turolov's submarine, which had been destroyed trying to kill Ramius.
Meanwhile, Ramius, his surviving crew, and the team from the USS Dallas managed to slip away and hide the submarine in a river where it would be unlikely to be spotted by Soviet spy satellites. After delivering the sub Ramius was hopeful that the political fallout from the entire affair would cause some long overdue change in the Soviet Union. Under the name Mark Ramsey he moved to Florida and worked with the navy on classified Soviet technology. He later commanded the Red October on a final mission to take the ship out to sea and scuttle her.
He later was sent out to the USS Dallas to aid in a covert operation to bring a Kremlin official to the United States before that official could carry out a coup against a politically friendly Soviet government.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the truth of what happened finally came out during the Presidency of Jack Ryan. Even though it officially caused a bit of a diplomatic stir, the prevailing sentiment in Moscow seemed to be "well done" for Ramius and the other participants.