Pirates of the Caribbean Ships: Every Named Vessel and What Happens to It

The Black Pearl is the pirate ship at the center of Pirates of the Caribbean, first seen in Curse of the Black Pearl under Captain Barbossa and later commanded by Jack Sparrow. Its crew carries cursed Aztec gold, which leaves them as undead skeletons in moonlight, and that curse is why the ship attacks Port Royal and carries off Elizabeth Swann and her medallion.

Where is the Black Pearl now? In the story, it ends the saga back under Jack's command. At the end of the first film Jack is picked up by the Pearl and sails off as its captain. In Dead Man's Chest the Kraken drags Jack and the Pearl into the depths. In At World's End the ship returns and fights the Flying Dutchman inside a huge whirlpool, and Barbossa takes it again to chase the Fountain of Youth.

On Stranger Tides shrinks it into a bottle aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge, and Gibbs uses Jack's compass to find that ship and recover the Pearl. In Dead Men Tell No Tales the shrunken Pearl is freed again so the group can reach the Trident's island, and Jack regains it at the end.

The Flying Dutchman is the ship of Davy Jones, introduced in Dead Man's Chest as the vessel where Will Turner's father, Bootstrap Bill, now serves as a cursed crewman. Davy Jones holds Jack to a debt, and the Dutchman is where that debt gets collected: Jones offers to free Jack if he delivers 99 more souls.

The Dutchman also anchors the second film's chest plot. Jones keeps his heart in the Dead Man's Chest, and whoever holds the heart controls him. Will ends up serving aboard the Dutchman in Jack's place, where he learns from his father that Jones won the key to the chest in a game of Liar's Dice, and he then steals the key.

In At World's End, Lord Beckett forces Jones to serve him and sink pirate ships, and the Dutchman fights the Black Pearl inside the whirlpool. Jack and Will stab Jones' heart, the Dutchman sinks and then rises again with Will as captain, and its freed crew helps wreck Beckett's ship. A scene after the credits is set ten years later, when Elizabeth and her young son watch the Dutchman return and Will come ashore. In Dead Men Tell No Tales, Henry Turner wants to free his father from the ship, and destroying the Trident lifts every sea curse, Will's included.

The Queen Anne's Revenge is the ship of Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, the feared pirate played by Ian McShane in On Stranger Tides (2011), directed by Rob Marshall. Jack is forced aboard it in the middle of a British and Spanish race for the Fountain of Youth, and finds that Blackbeard has a daughter, Angelica, who is also a former love of Jack's.

The ship is where the film's ritual gets assembled. Blackbeard needs two silver chalices and a mermaid's tear to use the Fountain, so the crew captures a mermaid named Syrena, and the missionary Philip falls for her. The Pearl itself is kept shrunken in a bottle on board, which makes the Revenge, in effect, the ship that holds the series' main ship hostage.

The Revenge ends the film in new hands. Blackbeard drinks from the chalice that lacks the mermaid's tear and dies, and Barbossa, who lost his leg to Blackbeard and stabbed him with a poisoned sword, takes over the ship, the crew and the sword. Gibbs then uses Jack's compass to find the Revenge and recover the Black Pearl from its bottle.

The Silent Mary is Captain Armando Salazar's ghost ship in Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). Early in that film, a British Navy ship carrying Henry Turner sails into the Devil's Triangle and meets the Silent Mary, and Salazar kills the crew but lets Henry live so he can warn Jack that Salazar is coming.

Salazar and his crew were trapped in the Devil's Triangle long ago, which is the grudge behind the plot. When Jack trades his magic compass for a drink after a failed bank robbery, he breaks that hold, and Captain Salazar and his crew are freed. They then destroy Barbossa's fleet, and Barbossa makes a deal to hand Jack over.

The story gives the Silent Mary one clear rule: Salazar's crew cannot step onto land. That rule helps the heroes early on. In the end Barbossa gives his life to kill Salazar, the Trident is destroyed and the sea curses end. For production context, Screen Daily reported that shooting on the film began in Queensland, Australia, in February 2015 at Village Roadshow Studios.

The Santiago is the ship of Ponce de León in On Stranger Tides, and it matters because the two silver chalices needed for the Fountain of Youth ritual are on board. Blackbeard's plan depends on getting those chalices from the Santiago, along with a mermaid's tear, which is why the ship shows up in the film's quest even though the story is mostly told from the Queen Anne's Revenge.

The chalices are the payoff for the whole detour. At the Fountain, the Spanish arrive and toss the chalices into a pool, and Philip frees Syrena so she can pass them to Jack. Jack's trick with the chalice that has no tear is what kills Blackbeard.

Lord Cutler Beckett's ship is the vessel of the East India Trading Company in At World's End, the film where Beckett controls the seas and has people hanged for any link to piracy. By then he has forced Davy Jones to serve him and sink pirate ships.

It is the ship that loses the saga's biggest fight. In the whirlpool the Pearl and the Dutchman battle, and Will, now captain of the freed Dutchman, helps wreck Beckett's ship, which kills Beckett. Of all the vessels here, it works as a plain symbol of the pirates' enemy rather than a ship with a curse or a story of its own.

This ranking is my opinion, built on how much each ship does for its film, not on how it looks. In my opinion, the Black Pearl comes first because the whole saga is built around who holds it, and the Silent Mary is the best single film ship of the set. The Santiago is left unranked, since it matters as a source of the chalices more than as a ship we follow.

1. Black Pearl. It is the one ship that carries plot in every film, from the cursed crew in the first movie to the Kraken in the second, the bottle in the fourth and the shrunken rescue in the fifth. Perhaps the clearest sign of its value is that every other ship here is defined by how it relates to the Pearl.
2. Flying Dutchman. It gives the second and third films their central rule, the heart in the chest, and then turns the hero into its captain. The ten year clause that keeps Will away from Elizabeth is one of the series' most painful images, and it only works because of this ship.
3. Silent Mary. It is the most effective monster ship in the saga, partly because its rule is so simple: the crew cannot step onto land. It also gives Dead Men Tell No Tales a tight chase structure, which is rare this deep into a franchise.
4. Queen Anne's Revenge. It earns its place as the ship that holds the Pearl in a bottle and the ship Barbossa takes over, but, in my opinion, the film around it gives the Revenge less to do than it deserves.
5. Dying Gull. A small ship with a clear job: it keeps the trio close together and the stakes personal. It loses points because it has little history of its own.
6. Beckett's ship. It is a strong symbol of the East India Trading Company, but it exists mostly to be wrecked.

If you are new to the saga, start with Curse of the Black Pearl, where the Pearl is at its most frightening, and read the pirates of the caribbean movies ranked list to see how the films themselves stack up.