The most-featured ship in the first film of the 'Pirates' franchise is Captain Jack Sparrow's, called the 'Black Pearl.' In the world of the film, the Black Pearl was originally a merchant vessel that belonged to the East India Trading Company - one the protagonist Sparrow hijacked. Black Pearl's real-life basis in naval warfare The 'Black Pearl' in port. Pirate ships served as a nexus to some of the most compelling stories from their era - when spontaneous raids, betrayals, planks, and cutthroat terms of untrustworthy surrender left the citizens of several colonial nations petrified of the Caribbean waters. The ships from the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' film franchise felt as notorious and dangerous as the characters themselves - and while some of the ships in the films were built from scratch, none of them could have hit the silver screen without the inspiration of real-life vessels from centuries - and in some cases millennia - ago.