Coin

The cursed treasure of Isla de Muerta consisted of 882 identical gold coins.

"The original plan was to use coins, but when it came time, the first Pirate Lords didn't have a pence between them."

―Joshamee Gibbs

A coin was a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as currency or a medium of exchange. They are standardized in weight, generally made of metal or an alloy, like silver or gold, and produced in large quantities in order to facilitate trade. Both coins and medals often had images, numerals, or text on them.

History

"Aye, that's exactly what I thought when first we were told the tale! Buried on an Island of the Dead. Find it we did. And there be the chest, and inside be the coins...and we took 'em all. Spent 'em and traded 'em for drink and food and pleasant company."

―Barbossa

One of the sailors' superstitions was that a ship built with a silver coin under the mast and a gold coin in the keel had greater luck than the one without the coins. Riches attracted riches, and the small sacrifice of those coins helped ensure smooth sailing, calm waters, and felicitous winds.

In the first meeting of the Brethren Court, the Pirate Lords intended to use coins, nine pieces of eight, for the spell to bind Calypso. However, because they were broke and short on money, the First Court used whatever they had in their pockets at the time. Despite not having coins, everyone liked "Nine Pieces of Eight" as a name, so it stuck.

When the young thief Pablo attempted to escape the king's guards by joining the crew of the Santa Catalina, the king's finest galleon, the lieutenant at the docks asked him how old he was, to which Pablo replied "Old enough to serve His Majesty with honor". Though the lieutenant was still skeptical, Pablo bribed him with one of the stolen gold coins, after which the officer said he wasn't too skinny to swab the deck. During the ship's journey to the colony of Zaragona, one night Pablo snuck into the captain's cabin to steal the captain's silver teapot. Although he managed to take the teapot from the captain's chest, Pablo's theft attempt was ruined when the pet monkey Zita stole one of the coins from Pablo's pocket and tossed it right into the sleeping captain's open mouth, waking him up. Many years later, the pirate Mr. Bleek took a room for a week at Carmelita's father's inn in Zaragona, and paid for it with three gold coins.

With the power of the Sword of Cortés, the infamous pirate Captain Stone-Eyed Sam ruled his own pirate kingdom on Isla Esquelética, where his subjects minted his own money—gold coins with the letter S and the crude hieroglyph of an eye carved on the coins' faces.

When young Jack Sparrow first arrived in Tortuga, his sack containing all of his worldly possessions, his knife, his box, and his stash of coins, was stolen. Inside the tavern called the Faithful Bride, Jack took the sack belonging to the infamous Captain Torrents, mistaking it for his own, which caused one of the usual bar fights. As Torrents fought with another pirate, his opponent fell on a rickety table which broke under his weight, sending drinks, coins, and knives into the air. Jack escaped from the tavern accompanied by the young barmaid Arabella Smith, and when he examined the sack in peace, he discovered it wasn't his sack, and the only coin he found in it he gave to Arabella. When the crew of the mighty Barnacle landed on Isla Fortuna, Arabella revealed her pistol was fake, its hollow handle full of hairpins and coins, serving more as a purse than a weapon. Later, as Jack, Arabella, and Fitzwilliam P. Dalton III searched the island, they encountered a thief whose hands were full of silver chains and coins. A few months later, when the crew visited New Orleans, a very hungry Jack bought an egg for a gold coin, but instead of satisfying his hunger, the egg gave him visions of the future, showing him Madame Minuit attacking him with her snakes. The same day, Jean Magliore bought a bowl of alligator stew for one coin from an old street seller. Jack and Fitzwilliam discovered Fitzwilliam's stolen watch in a pawnshop in New Orleans and asked for the price, the shopkeeper said it would cost them a pretty penny. Fitzwilliam eventually bought the watch for a few coins.

On one occasion the French pirate Captain Christophe-Julien de Rapièr and his crew captured a Spanish vessel which carried a respectable take of silver ingots, some very fine tobacco, and a relatively small chest of old gold coins. Later, as he and his friend Jack Sparrow enjoyed rum at The Drunken Lady tavern in Shipwreck City, Christophe gave one of the stolen doubloons to the barmaid Marie Seymour.

When Jack Sparrow asked Melinda, a prostitute at Shipwreck City, for her professional services, he convinced her to come with him by showing her a few coins. When they arrived at the darker section of the Shipwreck City docks to conduct their business, they discovered the corpse of One Tooth Tommy. Jack gave Melinda the coins, ordering her to go to the Troubadour and inform Captain Teague and his men about this discovery. The next day, when Captain Hector Barbossa was found sleeping with a prostitute named Sophie, Sparrow woke Barbossa up and asked him to check the suspected rogue pirate sloop. Barbossa quickly donned his clothes and tossed a few coins over his shoulder at Sophie.

As merchant captain in the East India Trading Company, Jack Sparrow spent good coin on his clothes, money he earned by the sweat of his brow. Around that time he had two secret pockets on his britches, one to carry Tia Dalma's compass, and another where he carried coins.

An ancient coin from Siam became one of the Nine Pieces of Eight and a trinket owned by Captain Jack Sparrow.

At some point after becoming captain of the Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow became a Pirate Lord with his Piece of Eight, wearing it as one of his many trinkets, though legends and pirate lore suggested that the coin was an ancient coin from Siam, one of the first two bits he ever pirated, with his hat being bought with the second bit. At the beginning of the quest for the Shadow Gold, the crew of the Black Pearl had attacked and captured a Spanish galleon, then freed the imprisoned Spanish princess Carolina, but also stole several chests of jewels and gold coins. A few days later, when some of the Pearl's crewmembers, led by the First Mate Hector Barbossa, managed to sneak into a Spanish fort hidden in the jungles of South America, they found a treasure chest full of gold coins, with which a Spanish navy admiral intended to bribe the Pirate Lord Eduardo Villanueva into betraying the pirates and helping Spain take over the Caribbean. They moved all the gold coins into canvas sacks and carried it with them back to the Pearl.

Three silver coins used by Jack Sparrow to bribe the harbormaster of Port Royal.

When Captain Jack Sparrow and first mate Barbossa sailed with their newly-recruited crew for treasure of Isla de Muerta, which included 882 identical Aztec gold coins, Sparrow told the crew a ghost story about a curse upon the Aztec gold coins. Shortly after Barbossa led a mutiny against Jack, the Black Pearl sailed for the treasure, taking all the coins inside the stone chest, spending and trading them until they fell under the Aztec curse, which led to a ten-year quest to lift the curse by restoring all the scattered pieces of the Aztec gold. During Jack Sparrow's own quest to retrieve the Black Pearl from Barbossa, he pulled out a coin purse and threw a few coins onto the harbormaster's open book, three shillings to allow him to dock at Port Royal without providing a name. A few days later, as Jack rowed a boat into the interior of Isla de Muerta, Will Turner glanced down into the water and saw thousands of gold coins reflecting the light from the boat's lantern—the treasure that was spilled from the many trips Barbossa and his pirates made into the caves. Later, prior to the battle between the Interceptor and the Black Pearl, the motley crew loaded their cannons with everything they could. Bottles and glasses, jugs and nails, tools, coins and cutlery rained down on the enemy galleon.

Sao Feng holds a Piece of Eight coin.

Over a year later, Will Turner begins a search for Jack Sparrow, which led him to a shrimper, who knew about a ship with black sails. For a few coins, Will convinced the shrimper to sail him out to Isla de Pelegostos, where the Black Pearl was careened onto the sand. A few months later, when the resurrected Captain Hector Barbossa visited Singapore to ask the Pirate Lord Sao Feng for his help in a voyage to Davy Jones' Locker and convince him to join the fight against Lord Cutler Beckett and the East India Company, Barbossa tossed Feng a silver coin, which the latter recognized as a Piece of Eight. Lord Beckett, unaware of the Nine Pieces of Eight being objects and contemporary items, had a line of coins—nine silver pieces of eight—lined up on his desk aboard the Endeavour.

At the beginning of the quest for the Fountain of Youth, as Jack Sparrow and Joshamee Gibbs found themselves captured upon exiting a paddy wagon in the courtyard of St. James's Palace, the wagon driver was handed a pouch of coins by one of King George II's Royal Guards. Over five days later, one of the human crewmen aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge turned a coin around in his hand as Jack discussed mutiny with the crew, with the coin having stopped turning when Sparrow revealed the ship's destination to the Fountain of Youth. Later, Jack Sparrow and the now-Privateer Hector Barbossa meet inside Juan Ponce de León's cabin on the precariously perched Santiago, with Ponce de León being a skeleton in bed, peering at the map of San Miguel with a magnifying glass, surrounded by treasure, including coins. As Sparrow and Barbossa took a look at the skeletal Ponce de León's map of San Miguel, they jump on the skeleton's bed, with Sparrow tossing a coin to keep the Santiago in balance.

Jack Sparrow sleeps surrounded with gold bars, banknotes, and gold coins.

About a year later, during the bank robbery in Saint Martin by a down-on-his-luck Captain Jack Sparrow, the vault was dragged by his crew across the town, with gold coins being tossed helter-skelter from the open vault and the hole in the building. Frantically, Jack tried to grab as many as he could, but without success, because at the same time, he was being dragged too. After the robbery, only one coin remained in the vault, which was promptly taken by Sparrow without his crew noticing. At the time of Sparrow's robbery, the astronomer Carina Smyth attempted to buy a chronometer from the scientist George Swift for a few gold coins, but the scared scientist pulled out a pistol and called her a witch.

Behind the scenes

Coins first appear through the gold doubloons featured in Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. They were first identified by name in the attraction's souvenir book.

In the Disney attraction's souvenir book, typical coins and ingots that may once have filled pirates' treasure chest were shown in artist's renderings based on photos in National Geographic Magazine, January 1965. Several are based on actual objects recovered from the sea and sand off the coast of Florida and believed to have been aboard a ship that went down early in the eighteenth century, according to National Geographic.

In the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Hector Barbossa tells Elizabeth Swann how he and his crew found Isla de Muerta, the treasure of Cortés, and "Inside be the gold." In Irene Trimble's junior novelization, Barbossa says "inside be the coins."

In the 2009 At World's End novelization, Sao Feng's Piece of Eight was a gold coin on a string.

In Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio's screenplay draft of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, as Jack Sparrow reaches for a stack of coins as "an item of approximately equal weight" to keep the Santiago into balance, Hector Barbossa says, "See there, I've learnt my lesson about taking treasure from a place, not knowing what curse might lie upon it." Jack pulls his hand back, then says, "Ruddy hell. I'll have it." Jack grabs the treasure, the ship overbalances. The final cut of the film does not feature Barbossa's line and Sparrow instead picks up a vase. Although Barbossa's line never made it into the film, it was used in at least one Facebook post.

Appearances

• Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean (First appearance)
• Climb Aboard If You Dare!: Stories From The Pirates of the Caribbean
• Jack Sparrow: The Coming Storm
• Jack Sparrow: The Pirate Chase
• Jack Sparrow: The Age of Bronze
• Jack Sparrow: City of Gold
• Jack Sparrow: Poseidon's Peak
• Jack Sparrow: The Tale of Billy Turner and Other Stories
• The Price of Freedom
• Legends of the Brethren Court: The Caribbean
• Disney Adventures: "The Black Heart of the Pearl"
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003 junior novelization)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2006 junior novelization)
  • Fluch der Karibik
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (junior novelization)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (video game)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (junior novelization)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Penguin Readers)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
• The Brightest Star in the North: The Adventures of Carina Smyth
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Novelization
  • Pirates des Caraïbes : La Vengeance de Salazar

Sources

• Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Story of the Robust Adventure in Disneyland and Walt Disney World (First identified as coin)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide
• The Pirates' Guidelines
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: "Inside the Brethren Court"

External links

• Coin on Wikipedia