The Undead Pirate Prisoner is the conjectural name for a character from Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island.
History[]
Background[]
This individual was a pirate who presumably served under Captain Jack Sparrow and/or his first-mate, Joshamee Gibbs. He broke the Code of the Brethren and stole a shipmate's loot, cursing him. This may imply that the treasure he stole was one of the 882 cursed gold medallions from the Treasure of Cortés which caused him to feel nothing, be incapable of dying, and turn into a skeletal corpse in the moonlight.
As punishment, he was chained up in a jail-cell within Dead Man's Grotto on Jackson's Island on the Mississippi. The pirate was left here well into the 19th century, when the island became playground for the likes of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Throughout this time, the prisoner's sole companion was an inanimate skeleton in his cell whom he referred to as, "Billy Bones".
Development history[]
The prisoner's design appears to be repurposed from concept artwork of Ken Anderson made for an early version of the Haunted Mansion.[1] Said version would have had the undead pirate be the ghosts of one of the victims of Captain Gore haunting him. In 2007, this design was used for the undead pirate of Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island, with a design based on the cursed pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Appearances[]
Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island[]
The pirate is chained up in Dead Man's Grotto, shifting between human and skeleton forms. Outside his cell is a letter from Gibbs which says, "A WARNING to them what breaks the Pirate Code Behold the fate of any thievin' scoundrel who dares to steal a shipmate's plunder. Signed, J. Gibbs First-Mate".
Trivia[]
- The prisoner refers to the other skeleton in the cell as, "Billy Bones" the name of a pirate from Treasure Island.
Gallery[]
