There was a maneuver called club-hauling. To understand it, you have to think a bit about how sail boat works in relation to the wind. The boat can sail with the wind pushing it from behind, called sailing large, and can also somewhat sail into the wind, if it does it at an angle, called sailing by ( which is where we get the phrase "by and large", which means, in any case). To sail into the wind, the boat has to go first in one diagonal direction, then in another. This process of going back and forth is called tacking. When the boat goes from , say, the starboard tack to the port tack it can be tricky, and takes a good bit of work, as you can see here. One danger is that, as the boat turns into the wind, it slows down, and if it stops moving the rudder will no longer act to steer it. If it is stuck, not turning, and there are rocks or reefs or a squadron of enemy ships coming down on it, it can be in real trouble. In that case, an anchor could be dropped on the side away from the wind. That would give the boat a fixed pivot point so the wind would then turn it onto the opposite tack. A good thing: but as there would be no way to pull up that anchor once the boat was settled on that tack the anchor cable would have to be cut and the anchor lost. Anchors of course were useful and not cheap. So, club hauling was really something done for an emergency. And it seems also was not easy to do well. One good captain who did it really well once was John Hayes, commanding the HMS Magnificent in 1814. He club hauled his ship to send it between two reefs and escape pursuit, and from then on was called Magnificent Hayes.

Whether club hauling would have worked in the movie.... I am not a deeply experienced sailor by any means ( one may stop by here and say something useful) , but even I can tell that the ships in the P of the C movies don't act like normal sailboats paying attention to the wind. I don't recall the scene, but given the magical thinking of the films I'd bet that the ship was shown moving fast, the turn was violent, with people clutching masts etc for support against the centrifugal force and hanging onto their hats....If so, likely not. Club hauling as a way to avoid missing stays ( getting stuck in tacking) was done with the ship almost not moving. It is hard for any big ship to turn quickly, and dropping an anchor to stop and turn many hundreds of tons of boat on the move would have put a huge strain on any cable. 2" manila cable will handle about 10 tons, so working only by sectional area you would expect a 6" anchor cable to only handle about 80 tons. Then there's the lashing of it to the eye of the anchor.... let's call that maneuver theatrical.

W.H. Smyth The Sailor's Word Book

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