Disclaimer: The following is fan fiction inspired by the film The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides © Disney (2011).

THE PIRATE'S GOSPEL

How an unlikely hero lost a leg, found a king and saved the day with a copy of Principia Mathematica in his breast pocket.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

CONCERNING CHRONOLOGY

A word about the chronology of events: According to the scriptwriters, the POTC films take place in a "floating thirty year environment" from about 1720-1740. The most recent film, POTC: On Stranger Tides, was given a fixed date of 1750. There has been considerable debate about the amount of time elapsed between POTC: At World's End and On Stranger Tides. For the purposes of this story, the following timeline, which is still a bit too compressed for my tastes) has been employed with regard to the films:

1750: On Stranger Tides

1744: At World's End

1741: Dead Man's Chest

1739: Curse of the Black Pearl

The crux of my arguments in favor of substantially lengthening the timeline rests on the distances traveled. Remember it takes a long time to get from Point "A" to Point "B" in the 18th Century. Running in the full wind a large merchant ship or warship had a maximum speed of around 9 kts (1 knot = 1.15 mph). For frigates, 13 kts (15mph) was considered exceptional. In Caribbean waters it was possible to travel up to 150 miles a day; however, an Atlantic crossing from Europe to the Colonies was considerably slower, 80-100 miles, and an average (incident-free) trip amounted to a 40-50 day journey. Thus, to be accurate the timeline needs to reflect the amount of time spent on the water, especially when the story line leaves the Caribbean Sea. For example, the distance from Port Royal to Singapore is over 11,000 miles as the crow flies. The shortest route to Singapore from the Caribbean would have been across the Atlantic, rounding Africa's southern extreme at the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean for a total of about 14,000 miles and taken over five months (approx. 155 days), if an average speed of 90 miles per diem could be maintained.

Geography is an important part of the story and needs not be abridged carelessly as some are wont to do For example, a Pacific trek from Port Royal to Singapore would have taken much longer, something Rob Kidd in the Legends of the Brethren Court series failed to appreciate when he sent our intrepid heroes from Port Royal to the Straits of Magellan and across the Pacific roughly following the route Cook would take much later in the century and, thus making the trip stretch 20,000 miles. Even at a steady clip of 100 miles a day (good weather, good wind and the Black Pearl's reputation for speed) it would have taken close to 200 days to just to get to Singapore not adjusting for the amount of time that would be lost in the perpetually rough seas at the tip of South America or factoring in provisioning stops.

Moral of the story: Jack sat in Davey Jones' locker for quite awhile and Elizabeth had plenty of time to learn how to be a pirate.

ISSUES OF CANON

For the purposes of this story, I concede primacy in matters of canon to the film series followed by production notes, DVD and promotional material, published film specific supplemental guides and A.C. Crispin's Price of Freedom (the adult prequel novel set 13 years prior to the first film). I do not consider the young adult Disney series (Young Jack Sparrow and Legends of the Brethren Court) as canon and my argument for omission is further bolstered by the fact that A.C. Crispin also did not consider these books part of the canon.

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