Thief

For other uses, see Thief (disambiguation)

The infamous pirate Captain Jack Sparrow was a thief, and Will Turner once said that there were no heroes among thieves.

"Thief! Little hairy thief! Give it back! Don't bite it!"

―Ragetti as Jack the Monkey takes his wooden eye

Theft was the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word theft was also used as a synonym or informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as larceny, robbery, embezzlement, extortion, blackmail, or receiving stolen property. A person who engaged in theft was known as a thief or thieves.

History

"What Code is Gibbs to keep to if the worst should happen?"
"Pirate's Code. Any man who falls behind is left behind."
"No heroes amongst thieves, eh?"

―Will Turner and Jack Sparrow on the Pirate's Code

A young orphan named Pablo lived as a thief in a town in the Caribbean because he had no other means of supporting himself. However, he had a code of honor, and only stole from those who would still dine well when the day was done. One day he stole a few gold coins from a gentleman's pocket, but the king's guards saw what he did and started chasing him. Pablo barely escaped by running to the docks where he signed aboard the Santa Catalina, the king's finest galleon. 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. His punishment was postponded by the arrival of the Buzzard, the ship of the infamous pirate Sharkheart Sam. During the battle, Pablo secretly boarded the pirate vessel and ingnited the gunpowder, destroying the Buzzard and her entire crew, but not before taking an iron box full of jewels from the captain's cabin.

Jack Sparrow began his adventures as a teenage stowaway by searching for a sack stolen from him by a thief in Tortuga.

Young Jack Sparrow showed a talent for stealing since his earliest age. One time, when he was a nine-year-old boy, Jack's father, Captain Edward Teague, was visited by the French pirate Capitaine Chevalle. While the two old pirates were feasting on wine and duck and sweetmeats, Jack secretly stole Chevalle's gold-topped walking stick. When the theft was discovered Chevalle furiously accused his host of stealing the stick, and a swashbuckling battle ensued, which Jack watched from the rafters, grinning and twirling the stick between his hands. At the height of the battle, just when the two men had their swords at each other's throats, the boy dropped the stick precisely so it struck both their heads at once, knocking them out instantly, and then ate all the delicacies at the table. The next day, both pirates assumed they had hallucinated the theft under the influence of the wine. A few years later, after Jack escaped the hectic life with his family, the teenage stowaway arrived to the pirate island of Tortuga, where he immediately became a victim of thievery from the first person he encountered. The thief stole a sack that contained Jack's few personal belongings. Searching for the sack, Jack ended up in the Faithful Bride tavern, where he stole the sack belonging to the infamous pirate Captain Torrents, mistaking it for his own.

A thief resided on Isla Fortuna during the early 18th century. When the infamous pirate Left-Foot Louis used the magical powers of the legendary Sword of Cortés to make the entire honest population of the island disappear, the thief was the only person left in Puerto San Judas, and he quickly used that opportunity to steal whatever of value he could.

Three days after the Fair Wind, a merchant vessel for the East India Trading Company, made its departure from Port Royal, some of the crewmembers snuck into the cargo hold and drank some of the rum. Their thievery was discovered the next morning by the Second Mate Robert Greene, who immediately reported the incident to the First Mate Jack Sparrow. Sparrow quickly figured out who the thieves were when he ordered some of the crewmembers to walk the gunwale, and one of the drunk thieves fell overboard.

Before Jack Sparrow departed from Calabar to search for the legendary island of Kerma, his superior Cutler Beckett warned him that failing to return with the slave girl Ayisha and the EITC merchant ship the Wicked Wench, which were both owned by Beckett, would constitute theft, and stealing a ship was an act of piracy. A few months later, when Sparrow, the Zerzuran princess Amenirdis, and the rogue pirate Christophe-Julien de Rapièr searched for the Treasure of Zerzura inside the Zerzuran labyrinth, Amenirdis called the Frenchman a thief for stealing her father's bracelet. Some time later, when Sparrow returned to Calabar and gave his report about the allegedly failed quest for Kerma, Beckett called him a thief for assisting the escape of two black slaves, one in Calabar, and one in New Avalon. Sparrow tried to defend his actions by claiming that he technically didn't steal the slaves, because they escaped on their own.

Jack Sparrow was a well-known thief in the eyes of the East India Company when he returned to a pirate's life.

After returning to a life of piracy, with the EITC merchant ship Wicked Wench rechristened as the pirate vessel Black Pearl, Captain Jack Sparrow became quite a skillful thief. When he was invited aboard the Empress, the flagship of the Chinese pirate Sao Feng, Jack stole a small jade dragon. When Feng revealed he knew what Jack did, Jack claimed he was liberating things, not stealing them. Despite that, Jack's deed convinced Sao Feng that he was the right man to help him steal the Deep Sea Opal, shortly before Feng claimed the title of Pirate Lord of Singapore and the South China Sea from his brother Liang Dao. At one time, Sparrow stole from the Indian Pirate Lord Sri Sumbhajee a bloodred ruby the size of a fist that was in posession of Sumbhajee's family for generations. He was forced to return it when he and his crew arrived to Suvarnadurg, but after the battle with the East India Trading Company he was making plans to steal the ruby again. At some point before the War Against Piracy, Jack Sparrow stole the Dragon Tile from Cheng's Castle in Singapore, planning to trade it for the map of the golden island of Penglai from the Chinese Pirate Lord Sao Feng. However, after Jack delivered the tile aboard the Empress, Feng ordered his men to kill him. At the same time, half of the Empress crewmen, led by Wong, raised a mutiny against Feng. The situation became even more complicated when a group of sea monsters boarded the ship, searching for the tile. Jack managed to escape but he had to let the tile sink to the bottom of the sea. Jack also stole a roasted pig from a pirate in Tortuga, which led to a double duel—Jack and Will Turner against four cutthroats.

The notorious pirate Bartholomew Roberts regularly observed the Sabbath and nearly always returned a ship to her captain after looting it. He is reported to have been humane to his prisoners and never forced anyone to serve on his crew against his will. He dressed like the finest gentleman and drank only tea. But for all his puritanical attributes, Roberts was still a brutal thief in search for wealth.

The HMS Dauntless, the pride of the British Royal Navy, was at anchor in the sparkling harbor of Port Royal, Jamaica to protect the citizens from the threat of thieves and pirates. Stamped, stenciled, and painted on every box, bundle, and barrel loaded aboard the ship, the initials of the East India Trading Company, separated by triple crosses, act as a guarantee of quality—and also discourage petty thieves.

Will Turner became a thief in stealing for Jack Sparrow and Hector Barbossa.

As young blacksmith Will Turner first learned about the Pirate's Code from Jack Sparrow at Isla de Muerta, specifically that "any man who falls behind is left behind," Turner responded by saying that there were no heroes among thieves. In the aftermath of the battle with Hector Barbossa's crew, in which the Aztec curse was lifted, Jack draped himself with treasure as a "king of thieves" at Isla de Muerta, with pearls around his neck, rings on his fingers, and jewel-encrusted gold crown as a finishing touch. Ironically, Will became a thief about one year later, having stolen the key to the Dead Man's Chest from Davy Jones aboard the Flying Dutchman for Sparrow, and attempted to steal Sao Feng's navigational charts in Singapore for Barbossa. When Jack the Monkey played with Ragetti's wooden eye, the one-eyed pirate called the monkey "little hairy thief." During his brief reign as the chief of the Pelegostos Tribe, Jack Sparrow "borrowed" a dagger and a necklace from the tribe's treasure, only to find that both items were cursed in a way similar to the Treasure of Cortés, and he was forced to throw them overboard. On one occasion, Jack Sparrow and Joshamee Gibbs celebrated the taking of a prize in the Faithful Bride. After the seventeenth toast, Gibbs fell asleep under the table, drunk, and Sparrow used that opportunity to borrow without permission some of Gibbs' share of the loot so he could use a room and a good wench. When he woke up, Gibbs found Sparrow's note and realized he wouldn't be seeing his money ever again.

Blackbeard's crimes included brutal theft, while his beloved daughter Angelica was "thick as thieves" with Jack Sparrow.

The term "thick as thieves" was widely used by this time, most notably by Jack Sparrow, as he would use to describe his relationships with Tia Dalma and Angelica. Sometime after Jack gave a ring to Angelica during their first romance, she traded it to Tia Dalma for the secret of the Profane Ritual, only for Jack to spotted the ring in Tia's shack and promptly stole it back. Because Jack and Angelica were thick as thieves, the ring would later exchange hands once again aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge during the quest for the Fountain of Youth.

After a pirate showdown with the East India Trading Company, Hector Barbossa stole Jack Sparrow's ship, the Black Pearl, though Jack had already stolen Sao Feng's charts from Barbossa and set off toward the Fountain of Youth. About twenty years later, Joshamee Gibbs told Sparrow that he listened like a thief for news of the Black Pearl. While making his escape in London, Jack swung down from the King's palace into a moving carriage, where he stole the Society Lady's earring. Before the battle at the Fountain of Youth, Barbossa listed Blackbeard's numerous crimes, including the "brutal theft of one used, twisted, hairy right leg." At the end of the quest, Sparrow sent Gibbs aboard Blackbeard's ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, where Gibbs "employed the selfsame maneuver" they "perfected in New Guinea" in an act of thievery, stealing the Black Pearl among other shrunken ships in bottles in a gunny sack.

Hector Barbossa called Carina Smyth's father a common thief, unaware that he was talking about himself, and that he was telling nothing but the truth.

Jan and Gan stole the Diary of Galileo Galilei from Carina Smyth in Saint Martin but she managed to recover it. During the voyage of the restored Black Pearl to the black rock island, Captain Hector Barbossa asked Carina Smyth how she obtained the diary of Galileo Galilei, as he knew the book was stolen from an Italian ship many years prior. When Carina showed Barbossa a ruby that was embedded on the diary's cover, Jack the Monkey quickly snatched the ruby away from her. Barbossa then declared that Carina's father was a common thief, only for the young woman to oppose the old pirate's claim to defile the memory of her father. However, neither were aware of their familial relation, in that Barbossa was Carina's father, nor that Barbossa was telling nothing but the truth about himself, that he was a thief.

Behind the scenes

Thieves first appear in Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, with the term "thief" first used in the souvenir book. The term "thieves" first appeared in the 2003 junior novelization for the film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The phrase "no heroes among thieves" is spoken by Will Turner to Jack Sparrow in the film.

"King of Thieves" was the title for one of the sections of the "Jack Sparrow" chapter in the 2006-2007 reference books Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide and The Complete Visual Guide, detailing how Jack draped himself with treasure at Isla de Muerta. "Ring of Thieves" was the title for a section in the "Jack and Angelica" pages of the 2011 reference book On Stranger Tides: The Visual Guide, detailing the ring connected to Jack Sparrow, Angelica, and Tia Dalma, and its history, in which Jack stole from Tia in the 2006 film Dead Man's Chest, and later exchanged hands with Angelica in the 2011 film On Stranger Tides.

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
• The Price of Freedom
• Legends of the Brethren Court: Day of the Shadow
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003 junior novelization) (First identified as thieves)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
• The Brightest Star in the North: The Adventures of Carina Smyth
• The Secret of Galileo's Diary
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Novelization

Sources

• Disneyland: From the Pirates of the Caribbean to the World of Tomorrow
• Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Story of the Robust Adventure in Disneyland and Walt Disney World (First identified as thief)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide
• The Pirates' Guidelines
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: The Visual Guide

External links

• Theft on Wikipedia