600 t1,320,000 lb
The Black Pearl weighs about 600 tonnes (roughly 1.3 million lb) by our estimate. No film or Disney book gives its weight, so we scaled it from HMS Surprise, a real 500-ton replica frigate of similar size. The steel ship that played the Pearl on screen was much lighter, about 208 tons empty.
| HMS Surprise scaled up, 50 m on deckIf the Pearl’s 50 m is hull length, like the Surprise’s 41.3 m deck | 900 t1,980,000 lb |
|---|---|
| Our estimateBetween the two ways of scaling HMS Surprise | 600 t1,320,000 lb |
| HMS Surprise scaled down, 50 m overallIf the 50 m includes the bowsprit, like the Surprise’s 54.7 m | 390 t860,000 lb |
| The film ship (Dead Man’s Chest, At World’s End)Empty “light ship” weight, Honolulu Advertiser, 2010; 189 t if US short tons | 208 t459,000 lb |
Disney has never published a weight for the Pearl. Fan wikis list her at 165 ft (about 50 m) with 32 cannons, twelve-pounders split between two decks, though the Pirates of the Caribbean Wiki marks both figures as unsourced. The scripts and production notes call her a galleon, but the ship on screen looks more like an East Indiaman, and A. C. Crispin’s prequel novel The Price of Freedom makes her old self, the Wicked Wench, a Dutch East Indiaman.
The closest real yardstick is HMS Surprise, the replica frigate from Master and Commander. It displaces 500 long tons (508 t), is 41.3 m long on deck and 54.7 m including the bowsprit, and carries 28 guns. A ship’s weight grows roughly with the cube of its length. If the Pearl’s 50 m is deck length, she is 1.21 times the Surprise, and 1.21 × 1.21 × 1.21 × 508 gives about 900 t. If the 50 m includes the bowsprit, she is 0.91 times as long, which gives about 390 t.
We took 600 t, between the two, which also suits a ship carrying a few more guns than the Surprise. The Surprise has a small link to the series: it played HMS Providence in On Stranger Tides (2011).
In The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) the Pearl was a set built on top of a steel barge and towed into position, plus a second version on a soundstage. Production designer Rick Heinrichs said director Gore Verbinski then wanted a Pearl that “could move faster than one or two knots”.
So for Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, the crew at Steiner Shipyard in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, built a new Pearl around the Sunset, an old offshore supply boat that had serviced oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Local reports in 2005 described a 130-foot (40 m) ship on a 96-foot steel hull; other sources give the Sunset as 109 ft. It sailed almost 2,000 nautical miles to film in Dominica on its own engine, at up to 9 knots. Its masts were for show, and the upper masts and sails were added with CGI.
In 2010 the Honolulu Advertiser gave the ship as a 208-ton light ship, its weight empty, before fuel, water and stores. That is about a third of our estimate, because it is a steel motor vessel wearing a wooden pirate shell, not a solid timber warship full of cannons. It was then rebuilt as Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge for On Stranger Tides, and when it was shipped out of Hawaii in 2012 it was reported at 270 tons and 140 ft.
About 1.3 million lb, by our estimate of 600 tonnes. There is no official weight in any unit.
Fan wikis list 165 ft (about 50 m), but without an official source. The real ship built for Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End was about 130 ft (40 m).
Partly. For the second and third films Disney built a working Black Pearl over the steel hull of the Sunset, a former oil rig supply boat with an engine and fake masts. Its pirate superstructure was cut away in Lafitte, Louisiana, in 2015.
Yes. The Interceptor was played by the Lady Washington, a replica brig of 210 tons displacement and 34 m including the bowsprit, about a third of our estimate for the Pearl. The steel film Pearl, at 208 tons empty, actually weighed about the same as the Lady Washington.
Blackbeard shrank her into a glass bottle, and Jack carries her around in it. She is restored to full size in Dead Men Tell No Tales, where she was filmed as a deck on a gimbal with the rest added in CGI.
Last checked October 2, 2026.
