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Walking the Plank: Strange Fictions and Strange Truths in Pirates of the Caribbean

“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 kind of punishment meted out to wayward members of a pirate crew. Unfortunately, Sparrow is forced to walk down a comically long board and 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. This entertaining ritual, featured in countless pirate movies and generally accepted as pirate lore, is nothing more than a Hollywood invention. Never happened. Many pirates were unceremoniously thrown overboard, but never with the aid of a board. 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 that 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.

Supernatural elements aside, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are drenched in a surprising amount of authenticity. The general mess of pirate hygiene is particularly on point, with yellow eyes hungry for fruit and dirty teeth that look like they’re rotting out of their skulls. Their clothes aren’t as colorful as Captain Hook and Smee’s, since they’ve probably been wearing the same clothes for months.

Of course, our hero Jack, despite his odd personality, must remain 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 tries to romance Elizabeth in Dead Man’s Chest, it’s not too hard to believe that she would be attracted to him, in spite of herself.

The amount of rum consumed by Jack is not an exaggeration. When the water turned bad, the pirates turned to rum, usually stocking up on as much as possible. While rum isn’t an ideal thirst quencher, it probably helped his 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 credulity 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 they proved to be formidable, if not more, than their male counterparts. In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, we are 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 in an undertone, the subject of many a wild and exaggerated story. In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Blackbeard is referred to by his real name, Edward Teach. When Teach first appears in the film, his beard is glowing 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 multiple guns, much like McShane does in the movie (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 crewmen, 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 was brought back on board and his head was recovered from him. In a franchise with ghostly pirates, mermaids, and squidmen, that’s not too hard to swallow.

The writers pepper the many pirates with an appropriately pirate dialect that isn’t quite as over-the-top as pirate movies of yore, 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. “Take out the sweeps,” says Barbosa, referring to the oars that sprout from the side of the ship to build momentum.

While strict adherence to authenticity was certainly not a requirement for movies dealing with the supernatural, the attention to detail unwittingly helps validate the world of Pirates of the Caribbean. When something out of the ordinary happens, it seems even more extraordinary.