The Fryin' Dutchman

Last week, Mom said that one didn't need to have seen Pirates of the Caribbean 2 to appreciate Pirates of the Caribbean 3: World's End, so long as one knew that Jack Sparrow had died at the end of the second movie. So, this afternoon, I went to see the third, and found that Mom was wrong. Not entirely: it's a marvellous swashbuckler; but I had no idea why what was happening was happening.

The opening scene, in the prison at Guantánamo Bay a fortified East India Company position, had all the subtlety of a supertanker. And the battle between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman, in the maelstrom, had to have been inspired by Isak Dinesen's short story. However, when two ships are sailing inside a vortex such that their masts, orthogonal to the sea surface at their own waterline, are entangled at the trucks, no gun-deck cannon ever made could achieve sufficient elevation to fire at the shop opposite. (A mortar, of the kind used aboard bomb ketches, is not a cannon.)

I love things nautical, and my favorite maritime period is the golden age of sail from 1780 to 1830 (the century previous is my second-favorite). So I noticed things, things like: loose cannon rolling around inside a heavily rolling vessel are likely going to burst through the bulwarks. Cannonballs could do that, and they weighed far less than cannon.

Although cannonballs did pierce ships' sides, they were not, at the time of the East India Company, explosive shells: they were solid shot, the splinters created by which would have only been flung away from the firing vessel. There would have been no external debris cloud visible to the ship scoring the hit. And they would have been smallish holes, not gunport-sized or larger.

And, sorry, but no two galleons ever built could have taken on a first-rate line-of-battle ship (a three-decker, mounting 100+ cannon) at pistol-shot range and lived to tell of it. (I must also ask, where did the East India Company even get a first-rate ship-of-the-line? And I doubt that the Royal Navy would have smiled upon the Company's using the R.N.'s yellow-striped paint scheme.) But if they were going to try, they would have crossed her bows and raked her before sailing past broadside. That was just foolish.

Lastly, I wish I had the figure to wear Elizabeth Swann's pirate-lord (pirate-lady?) costume. Well, actually, I wish I had Keira Knightley's figure. Sighhhhhh....