Silent Mary

"The men on that ship are looking for Jack."

- Carina Smyth

The Silent Mary was a Spanish Royal Navy ship of the line that sailed in the Caribbean during the Age of Piracy. Most notably commanded by Capitán Armando Salazar, the ship was lost in the mysterious waters of the Devil's Triangle. Years later, the ship returned to the Seven Seas, now transformed into a dreaded phantom vessel crewed by ghosts.

History
Captained by Armando Salazar, a decorated Spanish Navy officer, the Silent Mary was sent to chase the Black Pearl, a ship captained by the infamous pirate Jack Sparrow. The Spanish followed the pirates, until the pirate ship approached the Devil's Triangle, a mysterious area surrounded by gigantic reefs and covered in eternal darkness. When the Silent Mary sailed into the Triangle, the Spanish fell victims to horrifying supernatural forces that ruled the area, while the pirates managed to sail away. No one aboard the Spanish ship was left alive, and the Silent Mary remained trapped there.

Several years after the incident, the Spanish returned from the dead as ghosts, hell-bent on revenge. Crewed by its undead sailors, the Silent Mary, now a decaying and terrifying ghost ship, silently approached the British warship that entered the Triangle, and the Spanish used their ghostly powers to slaughter the British crew.

Design and appearance
A three-masted warship, the Silent Mary was originally the pride of the Spanish Royal Navy. A large, multi-decked vessel built for battle, she was perfect for hunting pirates on the Seven Seas, or destroying the ships of the nations hostile to Spain.

The ship's wheel was located on the quarterdeck, on a platform slightly taller than the rest of the deck, that also extended all the way behind the mizzen mast to the entrance into the captain's quarters and the poop deck above. A gangway, located directly above the guns on the main deck, connected the quarterdeck to the forecastle. By the time when the Silent Mary became a ghost ship, the gangway and its rail have collapsed in several places, and were no longer usable, making the ship's crew walk directly across the main deck. The ship's figurehead, located beneath the bowsprit, showed a woman holding a spear. Like many other Spanish ships of the time, the Silent Mary had a spritsail topmast at the end of the bowsprit.

The rigging of the Silent Mary had three masts: the fore, the mizzen, and the main. The foremast was rigged with a fore course, a fore topsail, and a fore topgallant sail, the mainmast with a main course, a main topsail, and a main topgallant sail, and the mizzenmast with a mizzen course, a mizzen topsail, and a mizzen topgallant sail. There was also a spritsail on the bowsprit. The main course was decorated with the Coat of arms of the Holy Roman Emperors, the usual emblem of the Spanish monarchy of the time, which made the ship's nationality easily recognizable on the high seas. The great coat of arms of Spain was prominently displayed on the back of the ship, right above the captain's cabin.

The Silent Mary's main armament consisted of sixtysix 36-pound cannons, twenty two on the gun deck, twenty two on the middle deck and twenty two on the main deck. She also carried four 36-pounders on the quarterdeck and four 36-pounders on the forecastle. She also had four bow chasers located inside the tower-like structures at the forecastle, and six stern chasers inside the same towers on the back of the ship.

Behind the scenes

 * The Silent Mary was portrayed by a prop built in Gold Coast, Australia.
 * The Spanish name of this ship would be La María del Silencio.
 * The Silent Mary shares many similarities with the Nuestra Senora de Lagrimas, the Spanish treasure galleon which appears in On Stranger Tides, a novel which was used as the basis for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Appearances

 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales