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Shilling

Harbormaster's ledger
"Hold up there, you! It's a shilling to tie up your boat to the dock. And I shall need to know your name."
"What do you say to three shillings, and we forget the name?"
"...Welcome to Port Royal, Mr. Smith."
―Harbormaster and Jack Sparrow[src]

The shilling was a silver coin and the name of a unit of currency used during the Age of Piracy, generally equivalent to 12 pence or one-twentieth of a pound sterling. It was originally the coin of the kingdom of England and the Holy Roman Empire introduced in the 1500s. The English shilling remained in use and in circulation until it became the British shilling in the 1700s, as the result of the Acts of Union and the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland to form the kingdom of Great Britain.

History

"Jack Shparrow! You owe me fourteen sh-shillings! Pay up!"
"Baldy! What a coincidence! I was just on my way to meet up with a mate that owes me twenty shillings. And the very next thing on my list was to come find you and settle up. Before you can dance a jig, mate, I’ll be back with the money."
―Malone and Jack Sparrow[src]

While he was living on Shipwreck Island, Jack Sparrow owed fourteen shillings to a pirate known as Baldy Malone. When Sparrow couldn't pay his debt, Malone tried to kill him.[1] Approximately six years later, when Cutler Beckett ordered Jack Sparrow, now an merchant seaman and captain of the East India Trading Company, to transport a cargo of slaves to the Bahamas, he promised to sell him the Wicked Wench for just one shilling.[2] About twelve years after Captain Jack Sparrow returned to a life of piracy, when Jack offered a small bribe of three shillings to keep his arrival to Port Royal secret, the Harbormaster couldn't resist. The Harbormaster's ledger recorded the details of every ship and sailor tying up at the dock. Jack Sparrow's handful of coins ensured that he didn't appear in it.[3][4][5][6] At some point prior to the search for the Dead Man's Chest, Jack Sparrow owed seventy doubloons and one shilling to a pirate in Tortuga, which led to a double duel—Jack and Will Turner against four cutthroats.[7] After Pintel and Ragetti saw the dead Kraken on the Black Sand Beach, Ragetti said people would pay a shilling to see the giant corpse, and "another shilling for a sketch of them sitting atop".[8]

Behind the scenes

Shillings first appear in Irene Trimble's junior novelization of the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, as the coins were given to the Harbormaster by Jack Sparrow.[3][4] In the film, the coins seem to be the shillings minted during the reign of Queen Anne of Great Britain (1702–1714).[citation needed]

Appearances

Sources

External links

Notes and references

  1. ↑ The Price of Freedom, Chapter One: Fair Winds and Black Ships
  2. ↑ The Price of Freedom, Chapter Eighteen: Exodus
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003 junior novelization), p. 14
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
  5. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide
  6. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide, pp. 16-17 "Port Royal"
  7. ↑ Double Duel!
  8. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End