Coconut

"Miss, I’m Captain Jack Sparrow, and I wish to apologize for my clumsy crewman. He should know better than to spend the afternoon drinking and spending all his money on rum. If you will please wait here, I shall give him some coins and send him back to the market, so I might make good on the damage he caused you and your coconut."

―Jack Sparrow to Ayisha^[src]

The term coconut can refer to the entire coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which, botanically, is a drupe, not a nut. The spelling cocoanut is an archaic form of the word. The term was derived from 16th century Portuguese and Spanish coco, meaning "head" or "skull", from the three small holes on the coconut shell that resemble human facial features, giving name to a bugbear.

History

"And find me some fruit. Bananas, coconuts...whatever there is."

―Jack Sparrow to the Crew of the Wicked Wench^[src]

The coconut could be found anywhere in the tropic and subtropic areas like Africa and the Caribbean. When she was a slave in Cutler Beckett's house in Calabar, the Zerzuran princess Ayisha was occasionally sent to the market for fresh food. One time she bought two coconuts, but one of them was ruined when the young sailor Chamba clumsily barged into her, spilling the contents of her basket, and the coconut rolled right under the hooves of a horse pulling an overloaded dray. Captain Jack Sparrow then appeared at the scene, scolding his crewman for his clumsiness, and giving him some coins to buy Ayisha a new coconut.^[1] On one occasion, when he was on Isla Cruces, Jack Sparrow used a coconut to hit Hadras, which resulted in the latter's head popping off.^[2] While infiltrating Singapore, the innovative crew led by Hector Barbossa made coconut helmets with bamboo breathing pipes to allow them to get past the East India Trading Company agents without being detected.^[3]

Behind the scenes

Coconuts first appeared in the 2006 film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.^[2]
In a deleted/extended scene for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, upon finding the Kraken dead, Pintel told Ragetti that they could "carve miniature Krakens out of coconuts" and sell them. This was included in the film's junior novelization.
For filming On Stranger Tides in Kauai, Hawaii, shooting in paradise certainly charmed the cast. "On my first day of shooting in the jungle," recalled actor Sam Claflin (Philip Swift), "we were waiting for the camera to set up. Malcolm, one of the pirates from Hawaii, picked up a coconut which had fallen off a palm tree, took one of his prop swords, and whacked it open. Soon we were all drinking coconut milk, right there on location. Hawaii is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life, and I feel blessed for the opportunity to work there." The final location in Kauai, before production moved to Oahu was the shuttered remains of the legendary Coco Palms Hotel near Kapa'a, one of the primary locations for Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii and the very place where he sang the title song in that early '60s classic. Director Rob Marshall and company shot in the vast coconut grove for which the hotel was named, with 773 palms harvested before filming to prevent the heavy fruits from falling on the hapless heads of cast and crew. The harvested coconuts were then taken by local residents to take full advantage of the nourishing meat and milk of the tropical fruits.^[4]
One of the quests in Pirates of the Caribbean Online requires a player to recover 8 coconuts from barrels in Fort Dundee on Padres Del Fuego.^[5]