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- "Pirates had infected the seas for generations, taking the life of my father and his father before, so I vowed to end this plague once and for all. And that is what I did, I destroyed dozens of ships. The last ones joined together to try defeat me but they soon realized it was hopeless. Nothing could stop the Silent Mary."
- ―Armando Salazar
The Silent Mary was a Spanish Royal Navy ship of the line that sailed in the Caribbean during the Age of Piracy. Most notably commanded by Capitán Armando Salazar, she was the pride of the Spanish Navy and its most feared pirate-hunting ship. During one of her missions, the Silent Mary was lost in the mysterious waters of the Devil's Triangle, but after years of imprisonment she returned to the Seven Seas transformed into a terrifying specter crewed by ghosts.
History
Hunting pirates
It is unknown when or where the Silent Mary was built, but she quickly became the pride of the Spanish Royal Navy. Her main mission was to search the seas for pirates to destroy. Carrying one hundred cannons, crewed by well-trained sailors loyal to Spain, and captained by a decorated officer Armando Salazar, the Silent Mary was soon known as the most feared pirate-hunting ship of her time.[1]
Attack on the pirate fleet
The Silent Mary fires a full broadside at the burning pirate ship.
On one occasion, the Silent Mary encountered a pirate fleet of ten ships. Even though the Spanish were outnumbered, the firepower of the Silent Mary and the skills of her crew were far superior to those of the pirate ships and their crews. In a fierce battle the Spanish sank most of the fleet, with the Silent Mary evading any serious damage. Soon, almost all of the pirate ships were nothing but burning wrecks. A few survivors in the water were mercylessly shot by the Spanish soldiers on Salazar's order. However, one pirate ship, the Wicked Wench, remained afloat, and Salazar ordered his men to follow it.[1]
The Silent Mary follows the Wicked Wench toward the Devil's Triangle.
With Salazar himself at the helm, the Silent Mary chased the Wicked Wench over the sea, until both ships approached the Devil's Triangle, a mysterious area surrounded by gigantic reefs and covered in eternal darkness. Just when the pirates were about to enter the giant cave in front of them, they made an insane maneuver, catching the reefs of the port side with ropes and instantly turning their ship to the left at the last moment. Since the Silent Mary was too close to the Wench, the Spanish did not have enough time to do the same.[1]
The Silent Mary strikes the reef.
Narrowly avoiding a collision with the Wench, the Silent Mary continued sailing straight into the Triangle. Sailing fast through the unknown waters and surrounded with darkness, the Spanish could do nothing to slow down their ship and save it from the approaching disaster. The Silent Mary struck the reef mere moments after she entered the cave, turning the bow into splinters. The main mast broke close to deck level, falling off the starboard side and breaking part of the railing, but the shrouds kept it connected to the ship.[1]
The Silent Mary burns.
The crash also resulted in several fires and explosions of gunpowder on the ship, causing panic among the sailors and soldiers onboard, and the Silent Mary was immediately engulfed in flames. The Spanish could not stop the fire from spreading, and the explosions quickly killed the entire crew, including the captain, whose body fell overboard. Soon, no one aboard the Silent Mary was alive, as the once magnificent ship was reduced to a burning wreck doomed to remain trapped on the rocks forever.[1]
Trapped in the Triangle
- "Ship to starboard!"
"That's no ship, sir. It's a shipwreck."
"No. She's sailing straight toward us." - ―An officer, First Officer Wade, and Captain Toms
However, fate had other plans for the Silent Mary and her crew. While the ship was still burning, the mysterious supernatural forces brought the Spanish back from the dead as ghosts hell-bent on revenge. They remained trapped in the Triangle for many years, while the Silent Mary slowly turned into a decaying and terrifying ghost ship.[1]
Many years after the incident, the Spanish noticed a Dutch barque entering the cave. The ship was flying the black pirate flag, and the undead Spanish sailors immediately attacked the vessel. The Spanish easily slaughtered the pirates and sunk their ship, leaving only the floating debris behind.[1]
The Silent Mary sails toward the Monarch.
However, a few minutes later another vessel, a British warship called the Monarch entered the Triangle. Though the British noticed the Spanish ship, at first they thought she wasn't a threat, because she was just a wreck. Surrounded by heavy fog, the Silent Mary slowly approached the British vessel, alarming the British commanding officer, Captain Toms, who ordered his men to open fire on the Silent Mary. Despite the heavy cannon fire from the Monarch, the Silent Mary was unstoppable, and her undead sailors used their ghostly powers to run across water and attack the British crew. Soon, the battle ended with the complete victory for the Spanish.[1]
Design and appearance
- "As much as I love that plan, no vessel can outrun that wretched hull of a ship."
- ―Jack Sparrow
A three-masted ship of war, the Silent Mary was originally the pride of the Spanish Royal Navy. A large, multi-decked vessel built for battle, she was perfect for hunting pirates on the Seven Seas, or destroying the ships of the nations hostile to Spain.
The ship's wheel was located on the quarterdeck, on a platform slightly taller than the rest of the deck, that also extended all the way behind the mizzen mast to the entrance into the captain's quarters and the poop deck above. The gangways, located directly above the guns on the main deck, connected the quarterdeck to the forecastle. By the time when the Silent Mary became a ghost ship, the gangways and their railing have collapsed in several places, and were no longer usable, forcing the ship's crew to walk directly across the main deck. The ship's figurehead, located beneath the bowsprit, showed a woman holding a spear. Like many other Spanish ships of the time, the Silent Mary had a spritsail topmast at the end of the bowsprit.
The rigging of the Silent Mary had three masts: the fore, the mizzen, and the main. The foremast was rigged with a fore course, a fore topsail, and a fore topgallant sail, the mainmast with a main course, a main topsail, and a main topgallant sail, and the mizzenmast with a mizzen course, a mizzen topsail, and a mizzen topgallant sail. There was also a spritsail on the bowsprit. The main course was decorated with the Coat of arms of the Holy Roman Emperors, the usual emblem of the Spanish monarchy of the time, which made the ship's nationality easily recognizable on the high seas. The great coat of arms of Spain was prominently displayed on the back of the ship, right above the captain's cabin. The quarter galleries were adorned with two towers, giving the ship's stern the appearance of an old castle.
The Silent Mary's main armament consisted of seventy-six 36-pound cannons, twenty-eight on the gun deck, twenty-four on the middle deck and twenty-four on the main deck. She also carried four 36-pounders on the quarterdeck and four 36-pounders on the forecastle. She also had four stern chasers located beneath the captain's cabin. Four guns were mounted inside the two tower-like structures at the forecastle, two in each tower. Eight more guns were mounted inside the four towers on the quarter galleries at the back of the ship.
While she was trapped in the Devil's Triangle, the Silent Mary suffered a dramatic transformation. With her keel, bottom, and lower decks almost completely destroyed, her ribs exposed to the weather and many planks broken or missing, her sails in tatters and all of her masts broken, the Silent Mary became nothing more than a wreck. In normal circumstances, any ship that suffered such extensive damage would sink the moment it touched the water. However, defying the laws of physics, the Silent Mary continued to sail like a completely normal seaworthy ship. Now a terrifying specter, she became the main tool of Salazar's vengeance. Using his magic, Salazar could easily bend the ship's bow backwards and open the ship's ribs like the jaws of some giant sea monster. He would then crash the Silent Mary on the deck of an enemy vessel, breaking it in half, while the Silent Mary, protected by Salazar's magic, and despite her decaying appearance, was seemingly indestructible. Another aspect of the ship's hull that could be transformed by Salazar's will was the ability to animate the figurehead into a living, hulking and seemingly sentient wooden monster that attacked enemies.
Unusually for ships of her size, the Silent Mary was very fast. She easily caught up with the Wicked Wench when she followed her toward the Devil's Triangle, despite the Wench's headstart. Even when she was just a wreck with all of her masts broken and her sails nothing but torn rags, the Silent Mary remained one of the fastest ships on the high seas.
Behind the scenes
- The Silent Mary was portrayed by a prop built in Gold Coast, Australia.[2] That same prop, in a slightly different form, was used to portray two British Royal Navy ships, the Monarch and the Essex. All parts of the Silent Mary above the lowest sails and below the main deck were computer generated.
- The Spanish name of this ship would be La Silenciosa María.
- The Silent Mary shares many similarities with the Nuestra Senora de Lagrimas, the Spanish treasure galleon which appears in On Stranger Tides, a novel which was used as the basis for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
- The Silent Mary bears a strong resemblance to the 17th century French warship La Couronne.
Appearances
- The Brightest Star in the North: The Adventures of Carina Smyth (First appearance)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales