Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest

Dir: Gore Verbinksi

There's one thing really bugs me about the 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest'. It isn't the curse of Davy Jones or the power of the goddess Calypso with her maelstrom or the half fish half men crew of the Flying Dutchman or the whole pirate court thing. All that fits nicely into the internal logic of the tale. No, what bothers me is this:


The ship in the middle, named Endeavour, is a triple decker (which actually means four gun decks). I count 45 gun ports in the top image, that makes it, without counting bow and stern chasers, or the upper deck cannons, at least 90 guns and thus a second rate ship-of-the-line ( a first rate would have 100+ guns). This is the bad guy's ship and the bad guy is the leader of the East India Company. Now, its a known fact that the EIC were not shy about using military methods to get what they wanted, but to go from hired armies in India where man power was easy to be had, to building and maintaining a second rate ship-of-the-line stretches my incredulity to the point of indignation.

That that warship is then dispatched by two pirate ships is unforgivable. Pirate ships were usually sloops, brigantines or captured traders fitted with a gun deck. Pirates seldom if ever got into battles because the whole purpose of piracy was to avoid the authorities whilst preying on fat merchants who couldn't defend themselves. In the film, the Flying Dutchman and the Black Pearl appear to be over decorated frigates, that is to say they are war ships which have a single gun deck with smaller guns on the upper deck (thats a 28 gun frigate in the title image for my blog). Expanding our magnanimous nature to allow the script writer the benefit of the doubt, this would give them perhaps 28 guns each, only half of which they can bring to bear given the nature of the broadside battery.

Thus, the pirates can bring some 28 guns and perhaps as many carronades to bear on a ship that towers above them, has a crew of 750 trained men and marines (you don't operate a second rate without a full crew) and can bring 90 guns and probably 40 carronades and swivel guns to bear. The conclusion in the film flies in the face of logic. In reality, the ship-of-the-line would cripple both pirates on its first pass, yet the ship-of-the-line is not only destroyed instantly, its crew flee's in panic and its magazine then explodes, yet miraculously failing to generate an explosion big enough to destroy the two pirate ships. Pedantic perhaps you might say, "the audience knows no better. Who cares?"

Well I do! In reality the Flying Dutchman was not a warship. No private company ever had the means to maintain a ship-of-the-line, and certainly not a second rate. Pirates never had frigates and seldom even a crew big enough to fight a frigate (to fight a frigate you needed at least 200 men), and worst of all two frigates could never hope to tackle a second rate ship-of-the-line and if by some miracle they did manage to ignite the powder magazine on such a war ship the resulting explosion would instantly obliterate all three ships.

Apart from that the film was great. Cap'n Jack FTW!!!



Incidently and sligtly related. Oleg and I ran some Napoleonic naval skirmish battles on thursday and both were interesting. The first battle saw the British win by firing one volley. Thats all it took to defeat the French admiral and cause the rest of the French fleet to flee. Our fastest war game ever.

The second battle was a more prolonged event which featured multiple ships-of-the-line, including a French first rate. Both sides had 2 sloops, 5 frigates and then a line of battle. The British had four ships and the French had three. The French first rate however proved to be an absolute combat monster. With three superior batteries and two flanking ships-of-the-line each adding a battery, the French despite being one ship down, out gunned the British by 5 batteries to 4. If anything this game helped to increase my outrage at the miserable sight of two pirate ships tackling a ship-of-the-line.