Stockholm Syndrome

I tend to get picky about little details like the century of a story.

Don Alverado was Viceroy of New Granada, a position founded in 1719.

The English colony of Carolina was first chartered in 1629 by King Charles I and named after him but was never settled. A new Caroline colony was chartered by King Charles II in 1663. And the first permanent English settlements were in 1653, 1665, and 1670.

The Spanish occupied Parris Island in South Carolina until 1655.

The sprit topmast and sail at the end of the bowsprit ceased to be used in new ship designs by 1720.

So both the Barracuda and the galleon would have been built to old fashioned plans at least a few years before 1720 and not re rigged since. If Van Horn was shipwrecked as early as 1719 and captured by the new Viceroy of New Granada the main part of the film 5 years later would be as early as 1724.

If the movie happens in anything like real history, of course.

I can't help thinking that van Horn was a really incompetent navigator and captain.

Supposedly he was taking a shipload of Dutch people fleeing persecution in Europe. If so, why didn't they head for a European country famous of its tolerance? It would be only a short trip to the Dutch Republic, their homeland.

If Dutch people wanted to sail to an English colony, they should have sailed down the English Channel and then west across the Atlantic to some English colonies and then south along the coast until they came to their desired destination in Carolina.

Instead van Horn's ship was driven by a hurricane until it was wrecked at Cartagena deep in the southwestern Caribbean. According to the hurricane tracks on The Weather Channel hurricanes form off of west Africa and head west to the edge of the Caribbean. Once at the edge of the Caribbean hurricanes go west, northwest, north, or northeast.

I find it hard to believe that a hurricane off the Atlantic coast of North America would suddenly turn and head southwest for a thousand miles to Cartagena. And his ship had a lot of (good or bad) luck to be driven through a passage in the chain of islands instead of being wrecked on one of the Caribbean islands.

Maybe for some reason van Horn decided to risk taking the route the Spanish ships used to sail to the Indies. Sail south to northern Africa and take the easterlies for a quick trip to the Caribbean. Of course as soon as an island as seen van Horn would have to veer off and backtrack a distance before turning northwest toward North America.

Van Horn should have been afraid of being caught by the Spanish authorities or being shipwrecked in an unfamiliar sea full of storms, reefs, and islands.

What if the Caribbean was not unfamiliar to van Horn? Then van Horn would have previously been a buccaneer or a "pirate of the Caribbean", or perhaps he worked as a navigator in the Caribbean pretending to be someone the Spanish would allow to work there instead of a Dutchman. Thus if he had been a navigator in the Caribbean under a false identity he would have been some sort of spy learning the lay of the land (and the sea) and planning to come back with a ship full of Dutch pirates.

And maybe he was coming back with a ship full of Dutch pirates not fleeing persecution in Europe by taking a very short trip to the famously tolerant Dutch Republic (their homeland) but with forged papers saying they were going to an English Colony with a land grant from the English king. Perhaps the pirates had those forged papers in the hope that, if captured by the Spanish before getting a lot of loot, they might be imprisoned as trespassers instead of executed as pirates.

In that case the storm that wrecked van Horn's ship near Cartagena would have delayed the start of his pirate career for a while until he escaped, gathered a crew, and seized his first ship.

Actually van Horn could have been familiar with the Caribbean relatively peacefully since the Dutch did have colonies on various islands since 1618 - fought over with the Spanish, the French, and the English, of course. Once English, or French, or Dutch got a small toehold in the Americas they tried to steal both continents from the Spanish. Perhaps van Horn had a relatively peaceful purpose in taking his ship to a Dutch island, and then was blown by a hurricane four hundred miles to Cartagena. Maybe.


Anyway I always thought Don Alverado was being pretty reasonable with van Horn and his crew.