TRAVEL PIRATES SERIES

In Dead Man’s Chest, it’s the cannibal-filled isle where Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner is suspended in a cage over a gorge. A photogenic coastline, rugged interior, and absence of overdevelopment made Dominica in the Lesser Antilles another attractive option. Vincent stood in for Port Royal (series star Johnny Depp stayed at the Young Island Resort), several seafaring scenes were shot in the Bahamas, and the Castillo San Cristóbal in San Juan, Puerto Rico, shows up at the beginning of the fourth installment, On Stranger Tides. That’s not to say, though, that the Caribbean ended up entirely on the cutting room floor.

TRAVEL PIRATES SERIES

Pictured above: an illustration of Port Royal in its 17th-century heydayĭespite its title, Disney’s hugely successful Pirates of the Caribbean series has been shot all over the world, in locations-and in front of green screens-in Los Angeles, Australia, Hawaii, and even Utah (that state’s Bonneville Salt Flats served as the wasteland known as Davy Jones’ Locker in At World’s End). What happened to the others? Well, that’s another story. There aren’t many signs of Port Royal’s rowdy past today (for reasons we’ll get to next), though the town’s history, including its run as a pirate’s paradise, is recounted at the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston and at Port Royal’s Fort Charles Museum, located on the ground floor of the only still-standing military fortification in a city that once had half a dozen. Made a safe haven for pirates by the island’s British colonial government in exchange for protection from the Spanish navy, the place was overrun with buccaneers, brothels, and bars, the latter serving oceans of a notorious rum about as potent as lighter fluid. You’d never guess it today, but in the latter half of the 17th century the sleepy fishing village of Port Royal on the southeastern coast of Jamaica (about 19 miles south of Kingston) was one of the Western Hemisphere’s largest and liveliest cities-and the Caribbean’s undisputed capital of vice. As for the location of Blackbeard’s fabled buried treasure, your guess is as good as ours. Supporting evidence is nil, but the panoramic view from the top of the tower is a doozy. Local lore holds that the infamous pirate used the 17th-century watchtower (pictured above, along with Blackbeard's statue) as a lookout. One of the most prominent points of interest is Blackbeard’s Castle, a national historic landmark in the red-roofed city of Charlotte Amalie on the island of St. Many sites throughout the Caribbean claim an association with Blackbeard, but it’s hard to confirm those assertions marauding outlaws tend not to leave much of a paper trail. In the first two decades of the 1700s, he terrorized the shipping industry of the West Indies and along the Virginia and Carolina coasts, until the British navy finally caught up with him-and decorated the prow of his own warship with his severed head. One of the few real-life pirates to rival the fictional ones in notoriety is Englishman Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard for his prodigious facial hair. So hoist the Jolly Roger and get out those treasure maps: We’re setting sail in search of the real-life pirates of the Caribbean. But there are still places where you can find genuine traces of the region’s piratical history, along with fun ways to celebrate the myth. Separating hard truth from colorful legend isn’t always easy in the Caribbean today-if Blackbeard really slept in all the places where he’s said to have bedded down in island towns large and small, the famous marauder must have had a serious case of narcolepsy. Of course, the popular image of pirates hobbling around on peg legs, sporting parrots on shoulders, saying things like “shiver me timbers,” and wearing copious amounts of eyeliner owes less to reality than to fictional creations such as Long John Silver of Treasure Island and Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The Caribbean really was a hotbed of piracy at one time-especially during the 17th and 18th centuries, when Europe-bound ships laden with goods from North and South America were easy pickings for enterprising buccaneers.

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