I recently visited a pirate ship serving as a major set piece for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The fourth installment of Disney’s popular Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, the movie is scheduled for a May 2011 release and is being filmed, in part, on location on the islands of Oahu and Kauai in Hawaii.
I thought I would be visiting the Black Pearl, Captain Sparrow’s ship. After all, the news media covering the ship’s arrival in Hawaii in February identified it as the Black Pearl. Web site Hawaii News Now covered the Black Pearl‘s arrival to Hawaii earlier this year with a video (link).
When I arrived at Heeia Kea Boat Harbor in Kaneohe (on the lush Windward side of Oahu), the ship did not look like the Black Pearl. I mean, any Pirates of the Caribbean fan can identify the Black Pearl, with its angel figurehead and black hull and sails, right? The Black Pearl was the ship that Captain Sparrow traded his soul for to Davy Jones, the captain of the Flying Dutchman. In exchange, Jones raised the sunken Black Pearl from the ocean floor. So what was this strange ship (no pun intended)? It clearly looked like a pirate ship.
I should have known—the answer was right before my eyes. If you take a close look at the video in the Hawaii News Now article, you see that the ship is flying the flag of the pirate Blackbeard, with a skeleton holding a spear in one hand and a goblet in the other.
So was this the Black Pearl or not? Well, yes and no. It turns out the ship’s real name is the Sunset, the same ship that portrayed the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Undergoing an extensive movie makeover after arriving in Hawaii, the Sunset had been transformed, and is now Queen Anne’s Revenge, Blackbeard’s ship. A major focal point of the new Pirates movie, the ship, along with Blackbeard (played by Ian McShane) and his daughter, Angelica (played by Penelope Cruz), cross paths with Captain Jack Sparrow—and Kaneohe, with its lush green mountains and bright blue ocean, provides a beautiful backdrop for the movie.
There was a lot of security at the boat harbor. I checked in with the security guard, parked, and walked to the a public viewing area less than a football field away from Queen Anne’s Revenge. Even though it was still pretty early in the morning, there were already a dozen or so fans lined up in the viewing area. Throughout the entire time I was at the set, there was a constant stream of visitors. [KHON 2 News has a video of the ship at Heeia Kea Boat Harbor and interviews with its star-struck visitors (link).]
Another way of seeing Queen Anne’s Revenge was from the sea. Commercial tour boat operators were offering excursions that included an ocean-side viewing of Queen Anne’s Revenge. On the day of my visit, there were several boats circling nearby.
Upon our first sighting of Queen Anne’s Revenge, my companion (who has read all of the Horatio Hornblower books by C. S. Forester and who made a special trip to Portsmouth, U.K. to see the HMS Victory on the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar) said, “The top main mast is missing, and the mizzen-mast is misrigged because the lateen yardarm is directly below a square yardarm.” I had no idea what he was talking about. I never would have noticed.
The Sunset/Queen Anne’s Revenge is a 109-foot-long seaworthy ship. It has diesel-powered engines, so its sails are props. Likewise, I’d be willing to bet the same is true for its wheel.
