Movie!

[piraticalbob]

Went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End today, the first afternoon matinee on a Wednesday, so only 5 of us were in the #1 auditorium at the theater.

The critics who complain about the incomprehensibility of the plot are correct; it is hard to follow. The universal skullduggery by all of the characters involved are what cause this, I

Comments

[alagbon]

I'm still unhappy seeing pirates sailing around in what are basically ships of the line, though.

Ha! I'm not the only one who noticed this! I'm not as well-versed in nauticalia as some people, but that did bug me. (As did the scene in the first movie where he was drinking from a straight-sided bottle of a type that was completely unknown in the 18th century, in which I'm assumung these are set.)

[piraticalbob]

The new movie starts with mass hangings of pirates from long drop gallows, which weren't invented at that time period. Pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy were hanged mainly in harbor areas on the ground that appeared during low tides, on makeshift gallows; the pirate was forced to mount a ladder with the rope around his neck, and at the signal, the hangman turned the ladder, basically flipping him off of it; no drop, no broken neck, just a horrible long strangulation, unless friends were there who were permitted by the authorities to pull on his legs so as to strangle him more quickly.

In London, the place for hanging pirates was known as Execution Dock, which was just such a place as I have described, in betwixt the sea and the land, and the pirate, after hanging, his body to be washed by the tide three times and then cut down. Particularly notable pirates were coated in tar and displayed in gibbets after being hanged; Kidd suffered this fate.

[alagbon]

Wow. Armed with this knowledge I won't be able to help making a nuisance of myself when I eventually see the movie... I've always wanted to hire myself out to movie studios as a Historical Accuracy Consultant, maybe do DVD commentaries where I point everything out. (I'd probably recieve tons of hate mail...)

[piraticalbob]

The subject of piracy is a fascinating one. Dover Books has a very inexpensive selection of books on the subject. Alternatively, if you would rather read free, you can borrow Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly is a good recent introduction to the subject; Frank R. Stockton's Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts is the book I read as a child that piqued my own interest in the subject, and covers most of the best stories of the pirates.