Below Deck: An Interactive History Of Pirates

"Below Deck" — An Interactive History Of Pirates

"Welcome, ye swabs, to the true life of a pirate."

―Pirate Captain

"Below Deck" — An Interactive History Of Pirates, or simply Below Deck is an interactive experience made for the DVD release of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It features short documentaries that take a look at the real-life history of pirates, hosted by maritime historian David Cordingly. It is featured on the 2-Disc Collector's Edition DVD as well as on the Blu-Ray Editions.

The main option allows the viewers to navigate within a cross section of a virtual pirate ship and investigate many "clickable" items, while A Prisoner's Last Tale tour mode plays the highlights of the feature without navigation; the documentary segments are linked by narrations of an imprisoned pirate chronicling his memoirs.

Introduction

DVD Pamphlet

"Below Deck"–An Interactive History Of Pirates

Pirates. The word conjures up rebels on the high seas living a colorful, swashbuckling life. Explore the myths, legends and lifestyles of real pirates in this exceptional and informative experience. You'll interact with and learn secrets of pirates through short documentaries and unique "clickables." You'll be privy to historic documents, and you can investigate many items found within a cross section of a virtual ship. (A PRISONER'S LAST TALE tour mode lets you see the highlights of this piece without navigation.)

DVD Menu

Come aboard matey if ye dare, and explore the myths, legends, and truths about pirates. To navigate this ship you must first click on an area to explore. From there you become a stowaway and are on yer own!

If this sounds too daunting, ye be right! You can follow the woeful tale of the last scallywag to attempt such a foolhardy idea.

Sections

Scene Index

• Captain's Quarters
  • Code Of Conduct
  • Rank And Privilege
  • How Piracy Began
  • Black Bart Roberts
  • Blackbeard
  • John Paul Jones
  • Captain Kidd
  • Robinson Crusoe
  • Sir Francis Drake
  • Women Pirates
  • Chinese Pirates
  • Edward Lowe
  • What They Stole
  • Buried Treasure
  • X Marks The Spot
• On Deck
  • Punishments
  • Symbols
  • Nature's Wrath
  • Pirate Ships
• The Gunnery
  • Weapons
  • Battles
• The Galley
  • Daily Life
  • Superstitions
  • Types Of Pirates
• Credits

Captain's Quarters

Code of Conduct

You needed some sort of code on a pirate ship simply to provide discipline for an otherwise undisciplined crew. The reason was to prevent the crew getting out of control because a sailing ship was a disciplined thing. The pirate codes differ from pirate to pirate, but Bartholomew Roberts, which is the most well-known, had something like a dozen rules altogether. The chief one was that every pirate had a vote in everything important. The next thing was that the treasure must be shared out absolutely equally, because they were a democratic lot. There were no women on board. The pirates must keep their weapons clean. And if they deserted their post in battle, they would be marooned. They were designed, really, to keep the crew in order.

Rank and Privilege

"Hands, grapnels, at the ready. Prepare to board!"

―Hector Barbossa

Pirates were amazingly Democratic. There was a captain, obviously, and he was the chief chap onboard. A good pirate captain was, first of all, a good leader of men. That was absolutely basic. And secondly, an excellent navigator. And thirdly, a good leader in battle. "We'll board this ship and kill every one of them! Fire broadside!" The very interesting thing about pirate ships, as opposed to the navy, is that if the crew decided they didn't like the captain, they could vote him out of office. There were many times when this happened. Either the captain wasn't brave in battle, or he upset them. So they simply voted him out and voted somebody else to become captain. There was a quartermaster who acted on behalf of the crew, and he was the one who, when they attacked a ship, would lead the crew into action. "Come on! [shouting]" There might or might not be a boson and a carpenter, usually a cooper for making the barrels, and perhaps a first mate. They didn't have lieutenants or midshipmen or any of the ranks that the navy had. Before they went into battle, it was agreed that everything should be divided out equally. So they divided everything absolutely equally per man, but the captain got the ship, if they captured a ship.

How Piracy Began

"I know every seamen in these here parts like the palm of this hand."
"Did you know Captain Billy Bones?"
"What ship did he sail in, matey?"
"He was a pirate."

―Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins

Piracy is a huge subject, because they have always been pirates. Ever since the first person set off in a boat or sitting on a log, there were other people to capture that particular ship. There were Greek pirates, there were Roman pirates. The Vikings certainly count as pirates. There have been pirates in the Far East, Indian pirates, Mediterranean pirates, the corsairs. The golden age of piracy was roughly 1650 to about... 1720 or so. We call it the golden age because it had all the famous pirates operating at that time. Blackbeard and Captain Kidd and the female pirates. All the notorious ones were operating during that period. There are still pirates today. Right the way through history, the pirates have been around.

Black Bart Roberts

Bartholomew Roberts was a Welshman, and he became a merchant seaman. He rapidly established himself in the West Indies as a ferocious and very successful pirate. He very rapidly traded up until he had a whole fleet of ships. He captured during his lifetime 40 or 50 merchant ships. He sailed across the Atlantic several times and eventually became such a menace that the British sent out a warship to track him down. He was actually, in the end, cornered off Africa and killed in a sea battle.

Blackbeard

Blackbeard has become one of the most notorious pirates because he was a great self-promoter. He would go into battle with smoke billowing around his head and guns all over him. He was a big, tall man. He was six-foot-six. He did have a huge black beard that he platted when he went into battle. But curious enough, he was not as fierce as all that. He did attack Charleston, South Carolina, and forced the mayor to give him all sorts of stuff. Blackbeard's death in Ocracoke Inlet became the most popular or famous pirate battle because it was well-publicized at the time. What happened there was that Lieutenant Maynard was sent by his captain, on behalf of the governor of Massachusetts, to track down Blackbeard. Lieutenant Maynard attacked at dawn in two small ships and came up alongside Blackbeard. There was a tremendous fight onboard. Blackbeard was, by tradition, attacked with something like 20 musket balls and six cutlass wounds and eventually fell to the deck dead. At the end of the day, the decks were running with blood, and Blackbeard supposedly swam around the ship three times headless, and that was the end of Blackbeard.

John Paul Jones

Captain John Paul Jones wasn't really a pirate. He was a privateer. He was Scottish originally. He was the son of a Scottish gardener. Came over to America, became a merchant sea captain. Then, during the American Revolution, he joined the American Navy. He was a very effective leader. He became captain of an American Naval ship, and he led two famous expeditions around the coast of Britain and became known as a pirate by the British because he was such a menace. In fact, he made his name with a tremendous sea battle off Flamborough Head, when he attacked a British warship and forced it to surrender.

Captain Kidd

Captain Kidd never meant to be a pirate. He was a Scotsman who went out to live in the West Indies. He became a privateer. He bought a house in New York and married and had two daughters. He then went to London, and he set up a privateering expedition. Went out to the Indian Ocean to catch pirates. But he had a mutinous crew, he didn't catch any pirates, and he actually turned pirate himself. Captured a ship called the Quedah Merchant, which was a treasure ship, and upset the East India Company by capturing an East India Company ship. A reward was put out for him.

"Described as five feet, ten inches in height, brown, bushy hair, shabby with an inclination to be genteel."

―Allan Breck Stewart

When he arrived back in New York, the governor there arrested him, sent him back to England. He was tried before the House of Commons, the only pirate to be tried there, and was condemned to death and executed at Execution Dock. To this day, there is an inn called The William Kidd, overlooking the spot where he was hanged.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is another of those red herrings. Robinson Crusoe is a fictional character, obviously. But the thing about Robinson Crusoe where he ties into pirates is that Daniel Defoe based his life on that of Alexander Selkirk, who was a real-life seaman who was marooned on the island of Juan Fernández by William Dampier, who was a privateer and formerly a pirate. He was on the island for four years, and he lived on goats and fish and tamed all the cats on the island, and was then picked up by Woodes Rogers, who was doing his circumnavigation on the way home.

Sir Francis Drake

"If Drake had come to you first, should we rejoice at the good news?"
"You cannot mean Drake's raid on Cadiz."
"I do mean Drake's raid on Cadiz."

―Robert Dudley and William Cecil

Sir Francis Drake would never have seen himself as a pirate, but the Spanish did see him as a pirate. The reason was that Francis Drake went out on a series of plundering expeditions on the Spanish Main and attacked Spanish ships and Spanish treasure ports.

"In the last month, English pirates have destroyed some 7,000 tons of our shipping."

―Spanish Ambassador

When Drake came back, he had a ship loaded with treasure worth $60 million dollars, something like that. He then becomes a part of the English Navy, and he then becomes an English hero, really, and attacks the Spanish Armada and attacks Cadiz and so on. So he ends his life as Sir Francis Drake and a great British hero, but he began life as a pirate.

Women Pirates

There were two famous women pirates. They were Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Mary Read was brought up as a boy, joined the army as a cadet, went out to Flanders, married a soldier, soldier died, and then joined a merchant ship. Went out to the West Indies, and the merchant ship was captured by Calico Jack, a pirate, who already had on that ship Anne Bonny as his lover. Anne Bonny had been born in Dublin. She married a sailor called Jack Bonny, who was a rather useless sailor but took her out to Nassau, where she fell in love with a much more dashing Calico Jack. So there was Calico Jack with the two women onboard who were by far the fiercest members of his crew. Calico Jack is sailing off the coast of Jamaica. He's intercepted by somebody called Captain Barnet who'd been sent out to capture pirates. They're all captured, sent to the capital of Jamaica. A trial takes place. All the men are hanged, but the women get off because they both manage to get pregnant, and you couldn't hang a woman with an unborn child because the child was innocent.

Chinese Pirates

Chinese pirates are amazing. There were hundreds of Chinese pirates. A Mrs. Cheng married a pirate chief called Captain Cheng. When he died, she took over this sort of pirate confederation. She had hundreds of ships at her disposal, a rule of terror all the way up and down the coast of China. They were very nasty to their victims. They would behead them at the drop of a hat. But in the end, the authorities began to close in on her, and she persuaded them to have an armistice. All the pirates were pardoned, and she actually retired. She's one of the few pirate captains to retire. She retired, I think, to Canton a wealthy lady.

Edward Lowe

"Fire that musket, and I cuts his throat."

―Long John Silver

There were a number of very nasty pirates. There was a very horrible man called Edward Lowe who used to do extremely nasty things to people. He used to cut off people's lips and cook them and then make the people eat them...and worse things than that that I won't go into. Obviously, he was a bit of a sadist. My theory is that he deliberately cultivated a terrifying image because it made their life easier. When they came alongside somebody and ran up the Jolly Roger flag, hopefully everybody would surrender without a fight. I think that was part of it, this terror image cultivated by torture and nasty things.

What They Stole

In the days of Francis Drake and a bit later, the Spanish treasure galleons used to go regularly from the Spanish Main, via Havana, back to Spain. So people like Henry Morgan and Francis Drake beforehand knew the treasure galleons' routes and would intercept them. But later pirates actually would know where the trade routes were, and they would shadow a merchant ship for a while and try and work out whether it was a ship worth attacking and whether it was powerfully armed. If too powerfully armed, they wouldn't attack it. Pirates, first of all, went for gold and silver because that was what would make them rich quick. "[laughing]" But also, surprisingly, pirates stole what you would call household goods. They'd steal soap and bits and pieces just to keep them going onboard. They would also steal, very often, essential items of gear from the other ship. They might steal anchors, ropes and that sort of thing. A lot of ambitious pirates would trade up their ship. So they would start with like a 26-gun ship. They would attack a 42-gun merchant ship, take over the merchant ship, and that would become the pirate ship. They'd put more guns on it. Some famous pirates would have a little fleet of pirate ships. They'd be on the biggest one and have two or three others. What they always endeavored to steal was plenty of drink. "Give me a full one, George." [c] One of the interesting things about a pirate attack is that, having got all the loot they wanted, they would end up completely plastered. And so that was the usual end of a pirate attack.

Buried Treasure

"Devil's eyes can find, Mr. Silver, but not when them that finds has hid it, says I! [laughing]"

―Ben Gunn

The thing about buried treasure is that I don't believe in it. There were accounts of buried treasure. We know that Captain Kidd buried some treasure on Gardner's Island outside New York, but we think that most of it was subsequently retrieved within a year or so of him doing that. My theory is that Captain Kidd's whole life became so famous, because he was tried in London and executed at Execution Dock, that buried treasure became associated with pirates. There are very few accounts of pirates actually burying treasure. And in a way, what's the point? You wanted to get back to civilization and blow the money on wine, women and song and not bury it. If I was going for buried treasure, I would look for sunken treasure galleons, Spanish treasure galleons, because we know where a lot of them were. Many sank in the Florida Straits and the Windward Passage and in the Havana area. There's a lot of treasure out there waiting to be found. You're far more likely to find one of those than a sunken pirate ship.

X Marks The Spot

"Dig! Rip 'em up, you swabs!"

―Long John Silver

There is no doubt that the Caribbean became the sort of heart of piracy for a period of about 50 years. It really began with the Spanish finding treasure in America. The Spanish started to bring back huge amounts of gold and silver from various treasure ports on what was called the Spanish Main. They used to assemble these convoys of treasure ships, via Havana, and they would sail from Havana back to Seville. It was actually before they became the convoys in Havana that the people like Francis Drake and Henry Morgan would attack the ships. I think the Caribbean became popular with pirates because it had a lovely climate. There were lots and lots of ships to attack, small, unarmed merchant ships loaded with goods, and lots of deserted beaches where you could beach your ship. And almost impossible for the authorities to track you down. So it was an ideal pirate hunting ground. The Indian Ocean was a good place for a pirate because it had the very rich ships of the East India Company going to and fro. It also had the occasional treasure galleon going to India with stuff from the Middle East. So there were quite a number of targets crossing to and fro, and a pirate based in Madagascar could go out and attack any of those. The other area that... Actually, the pirates in the Caribbean used to go across. A lot of pirates crossed the Atlantic several times. One of their targets on the African coast was the Gold Coast, which was another source of gold, and it was a source of ivory, and it was a source of slaves, which were considered merchandise in those days. And so a lot of pirates headed for the Gold Coast and raided the ports along that particular stretch of the African Coast. So that... Yes, that was another pirate area.

On Deck

Punishments

"[sobbing] A real goner, I am. And I haven't spoke with a Christian these five years."
"Five years? Were you shipwrecked?"
"Nay, mate. Marooned."

―Ben Gunn and Jim Hawkins

The chief pirate punishment was marooning, which was very simple. You put the pirate ashore, usually on a deserted island or islet. By tradition he was allowed a gun, a bit of gunpowder and some bullets and a flask of water to survive or not. It all depended whether he was picked up by a passing ship. Cutting off ears and noses was reasonably common, and then, of course, death for anyone who really broke every code in the book. And how you were killed depended on the pirate captain, really. Walking the plank is, as far as I'm concerned, a complete myth. In all my research pirates, I found one account of walking the plank. The thing about walking the plank is that it appears in Peter Pan. It then appears in all the famous movies. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Errol Flynn. Everybody's seen the movies, and therefore, everybody assumes pirates made people walk the plank.

"Jack Sparrow, be it known that you have been charged, tried and convicted for your willful commission of crimes against the crown."

―Town Clerk

Gallows Point was a particular spot in Jamaica, just near Port Royal, where pirates were hanged who were caught in Jamaica. A pirate hanging was a very public spectacle. You didn't have television, so everybody rode up to a pirate hanging to have a good time. They set up the gallows on the waterfront. The pirate would be bought out, go up a ladder, and the noose would be put around his neck. The ladder would be kicked away, and he dropped and hopefully died immediately. Usually what then happened, if the pirate was famous enough, the body would be put in an arrangement of iron hoops and chains and hung from a gallows that would be positioned somewhere where all the sailors could see it. The point was it was a warning to sailors tempted to take up piracy, that if you take up piracy, that's likely to be how you end your life.

Symbols

What is interesting about pirates is that they are instantly recognizable. Somebody can walk into a room with an eye patch or a wooden leg, and they're a pirate. They've become associated with a whole lot of things, like walking the plank. But I suppose the key recognizable things are wooden leg, scarf round head, eye patch, earring, pistols and parrot. I love the thing of pirates and parrots. I did quite a bit of research on it. The fact is that parrots were very popular souvenirs for sailors to bring back from the tropics. They also brought back monkeys and occasionally things like tigers. But a parrot was a much easier thing to bring back. You could teach it to whistle and say things like "pieces of eight."

"Pieces of eight!"

―Captain Flint the Parrot

The earring was something you put your savings into, and it was gold. One theory I've heard is that the gold earring would pay for your funeral. When you were collapsed on the deck with a knife through your throat, your mates would make sure you got a decent burial. I think the reason pirates had eye patches was simply because, like sailors, they were prone to shipboard accidents and being caught in a sea battle. And you find in accounts of ships' crews that sailors have missing fingers, missing limbs, and missing eyes. An eye patch is what covered up the missing eye. So simple as that, really.

"Was it a one-legged man?"

―Billy Bones

Peg legs or wooden legs... Incidentally, Long John Silver does not have a wooden leg. If you read Treasure Island, he just has one leg only and hops around on a crutch. Yet, he's given rise to the fact that all pirates have wooden legs. So it's rather ironic. But lots of sailors had wooden legs simply because they were easily damaged onboard a ship. Sailors were always falling out of the rigging, and you could get yourself crushed with ropes and fall overboard or crushed between ships or get your leg shot off with a cannonball. So sailors tended to have bits and pieces of their bodies missing. Obviously, if you had a leg missing, you made do with a wooden leg. "[yells]" I reckon round about 1700, the pirates in the Caribbean started to use a black flag with some sort of scary symbol on it, like a skull or whole skeleton. The early pirate flags sometimes had an hourglass as well as a skull, or something like that. The theory was that you've got a limited amount of time, and if you don't surrender within that time, you will be dead. So over about 20 years, the skull and crossbones gradually became recognized as the pirate flag. Though up to that point, different pirate captains had had variations of their own. But that's what ended up as the pirate flag.

Nature's Wrath

"Look out! It's falling!"

―Captain Hoseason

The most dangerous thing that a pirate faced was a storm at sea, and, particularly in the West Indies, a typhoon or a tornado. That was a devastating thing you endeavored not to be anywhere near. Apart from that, shipwreck, which could happen even on a calm day. If you didn't see a coral reef, you could go aground on a coral reef. Dead calm was not a very good thing for a pirate, because you weren't getting anywhere. You could run out of food in the middle of the Atlantic. Some ships did have oars. Captain Kidd, his ship was called the Adventure Galley, and it did have oars. But if you're in the middle of the Atlantic, there's no way you're going to row 3,000 miles to the nearest bit of shore. So you'd just wait for the wind. Sea fog was a terrible danger, then and now for seamen. "Listening for breakers. In this weather, you don't see an island, you hear it." Suddenly, the world shut down, and you didn't know what was around you. You'd bump into another ship or into a bit of land. So those were the main things, really.

Pirate Ships

"[horn blowing] [all chattering]" The thing about pirate ships is they came in all shapes and sizes because there was no such thing as a pirate ship built for a pirate. It all depended on which ships pirates were able to capture. They might mutiny and take over the ship they were on, or they might have got a small ship, attack a larger one and take it over. The movies always show huge pirate galleons. The reason for that is that the movie director wanted a huge deck so he could have sword fights and people swinging through the rigging. But all my research has shown that the favorite pirate ship was much smaller. It would often be a single-masted vessel, we would call it a gaff cutter now, with one big, huge gaff sail. Heavily armed. The reason they liked the small ships with the big sails was that they were faster. They were shallow draft so that they could escape from a much deeper draft vessel in shallow water, and they could be beached at low tide so you could scrape off the barnacles. A few pirates, like Bartholomew Roberts and Blackbeard, did have large, almost warship-like ships. But they were fairly rare. They were the most successful pirates that went in for big ships. But your average pirate went in for something much smaller. The pirate hoped that you wouldn't see it was a pirate ship until the last moment. Many pirate ships endeavored to look exactly like merchant ships and would actually fly friendly flags of a neutral country, like Holland, in order to lull the victim into a false sense of security. Then at the last moment, they'd swoop up alongside and raise the Jolly Roger and attack.

The Gunnery

Weapons

From biggest to smallest, the chief weapon on a pirate ship was the cannon on a gun carriage. If you worked your way down from there, there was a musket, which was a long-barrel gun, which the pirates got very good at using. Then there was the pistol. Usually the captain and quartermaster would have pistols, but not all the individual pirates. But the favorite weapon of all seafarers, and certainly all pirates, was the cutlass.

"You'll have to make do with a cutlass."

―Allan Breck Stewart to David Balfour

"Truce be over! Cutlasses, you swabs!"

―Long John Silver

The cutlass was a short sword with one edge sharp. The reason they liked it was because it was short and didn't get in the way of the rigging, and you could hack away with it. And then moving on, there were things like boarding axes. A boarding ax was a bit like a tomahawk. And then daggers, knives, things like that. Actually, they also had, and it's not often realized, they had hand grenades in those days as well, which were simply blocks of iron which were loaded with gunpowder and had a fuse. Pirates used them a lot. They were very effective in terrorizing the crew of a ship before you attacked.

Battles

There was a fairly standard method of pirate attack. You would shadow your victim for a while. When you thought that ship's worth attacking, you would come up alongside, fire a shot across the bow, which was the traditional way to say, "Heave to and stop your ship." The pirates would then appear on deck and make a huge noise. They'd fire one or two guns, but not a lot because they didn't want to damage the ship. They would throw hand grenades on the deck. They would all yell and wave their cutlasses around and generally terrorize the merchant ship they were attacking, come up alongside, throw grapnel hooks to secure the two ships together, and then they would board the victim. If the crew of the victim hadn't completely surrendered by that stage, they would cut their throats and throw them overboard. But probably they would have surrendered anyway. There were four or five famous pirate battles. To me the most romantic one that would be the most difficult to film was the final battle of Bartholomew Roberts, which took place off the coast of Africa in a gale. Bartholomew Roberts had two ships. And he was attacked by a warship called HMS Swallow. And the battle took place in the height of a storm. Both ships were firing at each other. In the end, Bartholomew Roberts was killed by a cannonball at the height of the battle. His ship was captured, and most of the crew were subsequently hanged.

The Galley

Daily Life

"All hands on deck! Man the windlass!"

―Mr. Arrow

I think a pirate life was fairly bleak. They have a romantic image because you associate them with tropical islands, and they have a glamour about them, but, in fact, it was a fairly desperate life. Life aboard a pirate ship, as on any sailing ship in those days, tended to be a sort of variation between sheer boredom and then frantic action. So for days at sea, nothing much would happen, and you'd be in calms and just sailing to get somewhere. Then you would attack a ship, or encounter a storm, and furious action immediately happened. So it was long periods of nothing, boredom, and they all got drunk and gambled and that sort of thing. Then all hell would break loose, and you were hard at work. "[yelling]" The conditions onboard were very hard. Being a sailor at all, whether it was on a warship or a merchant ship, was a very hard life. The food... Once you'd run out of bread and fresh meat and fresh fish, you were down to salt beef and a sort of ship's biscuit, which was hardened bread, and beer that had probably gone off and water that tasted foul. It was not a very pleasant life. The average pirate spent a lot of time being hungry, worried about being captured, and just looking for the next meal. The only thing that kept a pirate going was the next victim and the next ship. So not a good career move on the whole.

Superstitions

"The black spot. 'Until dark.' They come at dark."

―Billy Bones

Sailors, as a race, and pirates were sailors, were, and still are, extremely superstitious. Being a sailor, particularly on the days you'd sail, was a dangerous profession, so you didn't want to stir up anything that might cause you to end your life in a storm.

"Hard-a-port!"
"Hard-a-port!"
"Hard-a-port, sir!"

―The lookout, Captain Hoseason, and the helmsman

While a ship was being built, it was traditional to put a coin on the mast step, as it was called, which is the bit that the mast went down on. That's still done today. Traditionally, sailors didn't like women onboard ships either. Women were meant to be bad luck. So if women weren't allowed onboard because they brought bad luck, you didn't take a woman with you.

"Well, shiver my timbers. This here was cut from a Bible. What fools cut a Bible?"

―Long John Silver

By tradition, sailors did not set sail on a Friday because Friday was the day that Jesus Christ was crucified. So that was a bad-luck day for sailing. You could well not come back from a voyage, so you did nothing to tempt fate.

"You best start believin' in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!"

―Hector Barbossa

Types Of Pirates

There were really four broad areas of piracy. There were the pirates themselves. There were the privateers. There were buccaneers, and there were corsairs. Privateers were merchant sea captains and their crew who in a time of war were given a letter of mark which was authorization to attack the ships of another enemy country. The trouble is, when peace was declared, they were reluctant to stop attacking ships, and so they tended to slip into being pirates after being privateers. Buccaneers is a term that people get confused about. Buccaneers was a term generally given to the pirates and privateers who were operating in the West Indies around the time of Henry Morgan. That's in King Charles II's reign. So we're talking 1660, that sort of period. They mostly attacked the Spanish ships and Spanish treasure ports operating on the Spanish Main. Henry Morgan, for instance, burnt Panama City to the ground. The corsairs were straightforward pirates, but they were the pirates operating in the Mediterranean, and they mostly operated out of North African ports. The fourth lot, the pirates, were simply enemies of everybody, and not just the Spanish or the French. The definition is quite simple. A pirate really was simply someone who committed robbery on the high seas.

Credits

Film footage provided by:

• American Playback Image
• Buena Vista Home Entertainment
• Budget Films, Inc.
• Getty Images/Image Bank Films
• Streamline Films, Inc.

Still photographs provided by:

• Corbis
• Delaware Art Museum
• Department of Cultural Resources, Raleigh, Inc.
• Historic Urban Plans, Inc.
• James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota
• Lothian Books on behalf of Robert Ingpen
• National Maritime Museum, London
• Stock Montage
• The Granger Collection
• The Mariners' Museum, Newport News, VA
• The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY
• U.S. Naval Academy Museum

The following motion pictures are available on home video:

• "Kidnapped"
• "Treasure Island"

Trivia

• The list of features in Below Deck ends with "Credits" in the Scene Index as seen in the DVD menu for The Curse of the Black Pearl. However, in the Blu-ray editions, the "Credits" are omitted from the Scene Index and end with "Types Of Pirates" instead.
• The menu for Below Deck contains an easter egg: if the skull on the Aztec gold medallion image is highlighted and clicked, it shows a 3D-animated pre-visualisation of the battle between the Interceptor and the Black Pearl, created by Pixel Liberation Front.