“Last time you left me with a gun and a shot,” says Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), about to be stranded on a small Caribbean island by the villainous Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). This scene demonstrates exactly the type of punishment that was inflicted on the wayward members of a pirate crew. Unfortunately, Sparrow is forced to walk up a comically long board and plunge into the crystal clear waters below. In the long history of piracy, not a single pirate or victim of a pirate has thrown himself from a plank of wood into a watery grave. Featured in countless pirate movies and generally accepted as pirate lore, this entertaining ritual is nothing more than a Hollywood invention. Never happened. Many pirates were unceremoniously thrown overboard, but never with the help of a plank. Perhaps the idea never occurred to them. Or maybe it would just take “Too long!” as Barbossa’s quartermaster suggests when Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) is forced to cross the same plank. The pirates were an impatient bunch. They had no tolerance for long-winded rituals. They lived fast, short lives, and were too preoccupied with their fate to stop at a victim’s office.
Surprisingly, this is one of the few major details Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl gets wrong. And judging by how much it hits, writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio were probably aware of this discrepancy, but wanted to pay homage to the pirate movies of yesteryear.
Aside from the supernatural elements, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are drenched in a surprising amount of authenticity. The general messiness of the pirates’ hygiene is particularly accurate, with yellow eyes hungry for fruit and dirty teeth that appear to be rotting away from their skulls. Their clothes are not as colorful as Captain Hook and Smee’s, as they have probably been wearing the same clothes for months.
Of course, our hero Jack, despite his quirky personality, must still be the object of the audience’s affections…which is why he sports strategically placed gold teeth instead of several rotten teeth. His skin is in a lighter condition, and the whites of his eyes suggest that he keeps a hidden store of fruit on his person at all times. When she attempts to romance Elizabeth in Dead Man’s Chest, it’s not too hard to believe that she would be attracted to him, despite herself.
The amount of rum consumed by Jack is not an exaggeration. When the water got bad, the pirates turned to rum and usually stocked up on as much as possible. While rum is not an ideal thirst quencher, it probably helped their bravery when attacking merchant ships.
In “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” we are introduced to Anamaria, played by Zoe Saldana. While some audience members may scoff at the gullibility of a female pirate, Anamaria’s name actually pays homage to two female pirates who actually existed; Anne Bonny and Mary Read. These two served alongside “Calico Jack” Rackham, and proved to be formidable, if not more so, than their male counterparts. In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, we’re finally introduced to the infamous Blackbeard (Ian McShane), “the pirate all pirates fear.” That sentence is not far from the truth. Blackbeard was probably talked about quietly, the subject of many wild and exaggerated stories. In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Blackbeard is referred to by his real name, Edward Teach. When Teach first appears in the movie, his beard is lit up and smoking, creating a downright alarming ghostly effect. As theatrical as it sounds, Teach actually set his beard on fire before boarding the enemy ships. He also used various guns, as McShane does in the film (using them later to test Jack’s resolve). Physically, McShane is a bit short for Blackbeard, who was described by Henry Bostock, one of his many victims, as “a tall, thin man”.
At this point in pirate lore, Teach would have already been beheaded by Robert Maynard or one of his crew, and this is alluded to in the film. It is also suggested in the film that, after being deposited over the side of the ship, Blackbeard’s body came back aboard and retrieved his head from it. In a franchise with ghost pirates, mermaids, and squid men, that’s not too hard to swallow.
The writers pepper the many pirates with an appropriately pirate dialect that isn’t as over the top as the pirate movies of yesteryear, but more in line with actual pirate parlance. Most of these men started out as honest sailors, and this is shown in the dialogue of Barbossa, Gibbs, Anamaria, and many others. “Pull out the sweeps,” says Barbosa, referring to the oars that sprout from the side of the ship to generate momentum.
While strict adherence to authenticity certainly wasn’t a requirement for films dealing with the supernatural, the attention to detail helps subconsciously validate the world of Pirates of the Caribbean. When something out of the ordinary happens, it seems even more extraordinary.
