20 Things You Didn’t Know About Octopussy (1983)
6. “...He’s Still Not Fit Enough To Travel.”
Octopussy’s lavish barge was constructed from two matching Indian vessels located on the opposite side of Lake Pichola to Udaipur. One was still seaworthy and became the basis for the barge, using spare parts from the other ship.
The boats were hauled onto bricks by the film's Indian construction manager - who, as Peter Lamont pointed out in his memoirs, “The Man with the Golden Eye: Designing the James Bond Films” “was called Mr Dikshit - I’m not joking” - and his crew so that they could be renovated to Lamont’s specifications.
Meanwhile, boat master, Mike Turk taught the actresses portraying Octopussy’s girls how to row, whilst the galley mistress onboard the vessel was voice dubbed by horror “scream queen”, Ingrid Pitt.
The barge also features in the closing shot of the film in which Bond and Octopussy sail into a beautifully photographed sunset. This was shot on director of photography, Alan Hume's last day of filming and was captured more by accident than by design as the light was failing and the crew had to capture footage of the barge sailing into the distance for the film's end titles.