By the seventeenth century, other territories in the region (some with lucrative resources like emeralds, gold and silver) were also under Spanish control. In 1650, when British colonies in America were barely in their infancy, Spain had divided the entire Caribbean basin into several principalities. Ships - lots of ships - were carrying New World treasures to Old World capitals.

At the time, the Caribbean islands of Jamaica and Tortuga provided safe harbors for pirates (who had their eyes on treasure-carrying, Spain-bound ships). These “Brethren from the Coast” lived (and died) by their own codes of conduct.

Johnny Depp (as Captain Jack Sparrow) and Geoffrey Rush (as Barbossa) are fictional portrayals of real-world pirates. Orlando Bloom (as Will Turner) and Keira Knightley (as Elizabeth Swann) are examples of British folks who lived in Port Royal (when that Jamaican seaport was one of the most economically important English-speaking towns in the world).

In this story behind the movie, virtually visit what remains of Port Royal (and learn why two-thirds of it slipped into the sea on the 7th of June, 1692). Take a trip to London to see the headquarters of the East India Company (for 250 years one of the most powerful enterprises in the world) and to the Caribbean to explore Tortuga (once described as “the common place of refuge for all sorts of wickedness, the seminary of pirates and thieves”).