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Hawkins

This article is about the captain killed by Mercer. You may be looking for Hawkins, a pirate taught by Jack Sparrow.

"I've arranged passage to England. The captain is a friend of mine."
"No! Will's gone to find Jack!"
―Weatherby Swann and Elizabeth Swann[src]

Hawkins was a sea captain of the Terpsichore. He was also a friend of Weatherby Swann, the Governor of Port Royal. Hawkins was at Port Royal around the time of the arrests of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann following the arrival of Lord Cutler Beckett and the East India Trading Company. Governor Swann later arranged a passage to England and sent a letter to the King with the help of Hawkins, only for Hawkins to be killed at the docks by Beckett's clerk, Ian Mercer,.

Biography

"What's happening, father?"
"There are still men loyal to me here. A ship is waiting. I have arranged a passage to England and sent a letter to the King, detailing what has happened here."
―Elizabeth Swann and Weatherby Swann[src]

Not much is known about Hawkins' early life. At some unspecified point of his life, Hawkins became captain of a ship, the Terpsichore,[4] which was docked at Port Royal. He also became good friends with Weatherby Swann, the Governor of Port Royal.[1]

Around 1729, Hawkins was in Port Royal as Lord Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company and dozens of Company men arrived and forcefully took control of the town, in the process arresting Governor Swann's daughter, Elizabeth, and her fiancee Will Turner, as well as presenting warrants for the arrest of former British Royal Navy Commodore James Norrington and notorious pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. While Turner was sent by Beckett to find Sparrow, Weatherby Swann made an arrangement with Hawkins in order to secure safe passage back to England for his daughter Elizabeth, who had been imprisoned at the Fort Charles prison for helping the notorious pirate Jack Sparrow to escape from the gallows the last year. Beckett foresaw this action, however, and had his clerk, Ian Mercer, intercept Hawkins at Port Royal docks. Mercer murdered Captain Hawkins by stabbing him in the chest with a dagger-knife, and found about the captain's person a letter to the King of England written by—and thus incriminating—Governor Swann, though Elizabeth still managed to get away.[3]

Behind the scenes

Captain Hawkins first appeared in Irene Trimble's junior novelization for the 2006 film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Although he was identified by his name spoken by Governor Weatherby Swann in the junior novel,[1] based on the screenplay by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio,[5] the character only appeared as an unnamed captain portrayed by an uncredited actor in the film.[3]

According to Elliott and Rossio in the audio commentary in the Dead Man's Chest home video releases, the intended backstory of "Captain Hawkins" was to be related to that of Jim Hawkins' father in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, explaining the circumstances of his disappearance at sea and why he never returned to his home at the Admiral Benbow Inn.[6] However, this would have contradicted the Treasure Island canon where Jim Hawkins' father died at the Inn.[7]

Terry Rossio mentioned the trivia about Captain Hawkins twice on the website Wordplay. In the post "Ends of the Earth" (2006/2007), Rossio mistakenly wrote that the Captain slain in Dead Man's Chest was supposed to be named Jim Hawkins.[8] In the post "We Sail With the Tide" (2010), Rossio chatted with a film geek on set who noticed the reference to Jim Hawkins' father in Dead Man's Chest, which impressed him.[9]

In the 2006-2007 reference books Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide and The Complete Visual Guide, an image of Mercer and Hawkins in Port Royal is used to describe a scene in Tortuga. According to the visual guide books, Elizabeth Swann leaves the disgraced former commodore James Norrington alone in the docks of Tortuga where he is approached by Mercer, and in the shadows Mercer strikes a deal with Norrington on behalf of his master, Lord Cutler Beckett.[10][11] However, no such scene occurred in any of the various media for Dead Man's Chest, with Norrington and Mercer meeting when Norrington gives Beckett the heart of Davy Jones.[3]

For unknown reasons, likely due to violence, Hawkins' death is absent from the film's comic book adaptation.[12]

Appearances

Sources

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (junior novelization), pp. 33-34
  2. ↑ The timeline established by Dead Men Tell No Tales (which takes place in 1751) sets the events of Dead Man's Chest and Hawkins' death around 1729.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 POTC2 Presskit, p. 37
  5. ↑ Wordplayer.com: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
  6. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: Writers' Commentary By Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
  7. ↑ Treasure Island
  8. ↑ Wordplayer.com: WORDPLAY/Archives/"Ends of the Earth" by Terry Rossio
  9. ↑ Wordplayer.com: WORDPLAY/Archives/"We Sail With the Tide" by Terry Rossio
  10. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide, pp. 60-61: "Souls for Sale"
  11. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide, pp. 60-61: "Souls for Sale"
  12. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (comic)