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This article is about the ship type. You may be looking for the POTC storybook of the same name.
Pearl fleeingCropped

The Black Pearl, a cursed ghost ship.

"Davy Jones...is real?"
"He is. He sails on some kind of ghost ship. The
Flying Dutchman."
Esmeralda and Jack Sparrow[src]

A ghost ship was a vessel, usually with no living crew aboard. It may be a ghostly vessel under a curse or a physical derelict vessel found adrift with its crew missing or dead. During the Age of Piracy, the Flying Dutchman and Black Pearl were notable ghost ships.

History[]

Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman.

"A sea captain named Salazar has returned from the dead to hunt Jack Sparrow. His ghost ship, the Silent Mary, and crew, attacked the ship I was serving on and left me alone alive to tell the tale. Salazar is death itself. He will not rest until he has destroyed Jack and all pirates along with him."
Henry Turner to Carina Smyth[src]

According to a legend of Davy Jones, as a result of abandoning his duty of ferrying souls, Jones was doomed to cruise the oceans forever aboard the Flying Dutchman, which turned into a well-known ghostly vessel.[1] The Dutchman haunted the seven seas, where Jones would offer drowning mariners the chance to live by joining his crew,[2] though its crewmembers would eventually be a part of the ship itself. A terrible beast known as the Kraken brought Jones ever more souls onto his cursed ship, dead sailors forever impressed into servitude.[3]

Silent Mary sails

The Silent Mary.

Armando Salazar's anti-piracy campaign came to an end when his ship, the Silent Mary, ran aground in the mysterious waters of the Devil's Triangle, only to be raised by the Triangle's supernatural powers in a derelict state of its former glory. The Silent Mary became a terrifying specter, a floating nightmare crewed by ghosts and always surrounded with undead seagulls.[4]

Black Pearl Ghost Ship

The Black Pearl as a ghost ship.

After his beloved merchant ship sank beneath the depths, Jack Sparrow made a deal with Davy Jones to raise the ship from the bottom of the ocean. The Wench emerged a ghost ship, her sails tattered and her hull blackened, which by reason Jack would rename her the Black Pearl.[5] When Hector Barbossa's crew fell under the Aztec curse, the Black Pearl became a vessel that haunted the Caribbean.[6]

The Cave of the Red Turtle at the bottom of the sea was full of cursed ghost ships. The haunted place was always guarded by the undead servants of Davy Jones. When Jack Sparrow and Samuel Rackham came there to steal a gold coin known as the heart of the Black Pearl, they escaped by bringing one of the ghost ships to the surface. The haunted vessel was immediately attacked by a nearby Royal Navy ship.[7]

A pair of identical warships was built for the Spanish Navy, the San Pablo and the San Miguel. The two ships were the pride of Spanish Navy, but during the night of the full moon, both ships disappeared without a trace. However, according to legends, the vanished ships would reappear from time to time, pursuing other ships, and every pursuit would end with the sinking of every captured vessel. Because of these legends, the San Pablo and the San Miguel became known as the Condenados, the Damned.[8]

Armada Antilles Gate

The Armada of the Damned

The Armada of the Damned was a well-known fleet of ghost ships during the first half of the 18th century. Haunting the waters of the Antilles Gate they would strike fear into the bravest of sailors.[9] During the War of Jolly Roger, Jolly Roger's fleet was composed of ghost ships raised from the sea bottom, and led by the most terrifying of them all, the infamous Harkaway.[10]

Notable ghost ships[]

Behind the scenes[]

"The Caribbean abounds with gales and hurricanes. Aye, and a ghost ship is said to sail these waters, with her skeleton helmsman forever lashed to her cursed wheel. It is said that she can be seen sometimes in the light of flashing lightning, when the wind is screaming like the Devil himself was after Davy Jones."
―Unknown[src]

Appearances[]

Sources[]

External links[]

Notes and references[]

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