Tag: correcting continuity ( timeline of captain jack sparrow )

Young Jack (

1704-1713, age 15-24 )

This timeline covers Rob Kidd’s Young Jack adventures and the period leading up to the events detailed in A.C. Crispin’s Price of Freedom. Some of Crispin’s timeline bleeds in here, as the events that lead Jack to joining the EITC fall within this time period as well.

Jack considers piracy to be abhorrent. He believes that the ocean should be a free space and he is especially protective of the Caribbean, which is the closest region to a home that he knows. He is spirited and – as much as he questions who Teague is to him – he holds the man as a bar to be met. Jack yearns for the sort of respect that Teague so effortlessly commands, though he goes about it in all the wrong ways by insisting on being recognized as captain rather than enforcing the matter – but that is another topic altogether.

Jack’s early crew aboard the Barnacle will all come to play important roles throughout his life (Some so frequently drawn on for headcanons that they are, in fact, crew upon the blog itself or may be at a later date ) Arabella taught him the value in being educated on the supernatural elements of the world – and further illustrated to Jack the importance of not killing people – while Fitzwilliam taught Jack the bitter burn of betrayal, and showed him that simply being born to the right side of the law, did not in turn make someone a good person.

The conclusion of the Young Jack series is, for me, Sins of the Father. I do not count the stories afterward, though inspiration from them may be drawn from time to time. What is important to understand is that when Jack returns with Teague, he still does not know what he wants out of life.

It will be in this time period that he first encounters Armando Salazar, and where his path first has potential to diverge from its course. ( More in the salt of DMTNT. )

Important Notes:

  • By the time Jack is twenty-four, his understanding of language is precisely where it will be when we meet him at the age of thirty-nine in Curse of the Black Pearl.

  • Jack  trained himself to adjust his speech patterns so that he lacked a lower class accent whilst working for EITC, an occupation he held for five years and raised in position by right of skill and hard work. Being exceptionally observant, he was able to pass for upper class by noting their mannerisms and mimicking them. ( This becomes notable later, when he mimicks Cutler Beckett and later, passes himself off as the son of a lord without anyone being the wiser until far too late. )

  • Jack reads for pleasure: poetry, history, biographies. He has read most of Shakespeare’s poems and some of his plays. His favorite book is Captain J. Ward’sMy Lyfe Amonge the Pyrates, which was gifted to him by Captain Teague.  

Childhood (

1690-1704, age 0-14 )

Jack’s childhood is a tumultuous affair in which interaction is not courted – headcanon may cover matters, but for the most part this portion of Jack’s life is utterly untouchable. These are the formative years and all that he went through – both good and bad – are the framework of who he became.

Jack is intimately familiar with abuse; he was thrashed within an inch of his life three times by his grandmother, locked in her brig when he was eight, and knows the nature of her violent temper all too well. He is intimately familiar with both her cane and the sword within it, and from her wrath there was no protection.

What is, perhaps, most notable about this was although she was called Grandmama, Jack did not know if this was due to them being related or due instead to her venerable age and insistence upon the matter. As far as he was concerned, Grandmama was a title, not an indication of familial relation.

Jack wondered if Captain Teague was his father, but did not know for certain and had no evidence to prove whether he was or he wasn’t. Internally, Jack saw him as the man who might be father, and obeyed him primarily because not doing so was costly, but also because Teague was the only one who took any sort of responsibility toward him – in a manner of speaking.

Jack was Teague’s cabin boy, he learned the life of sailing alongside the man, memorizing terminology and learning his way around a ship from the time he was just able to clear the man’s boots in height. There was no fondness between them, no obvious care on Teague’s part beyond brisk corrections that would, eventually, prove to be lifesaving skills once Jack was old enough to understand the lessons.

Only rarely can Jack recall Teague doing anything fatherly, though in each instance the act was one of protection that Jack dismissed less of a matter of the man caring if Jack was harmed and more Teague being offended that someone would dare lay a hand on his property. This sense of thinking was made all the stronger in later years, but is important to note was registered early on – Jack did not believe he had parents, but he did know he belonged to Teague by some measure.

The violence of his young life was compacted by the violence all around him. Growing up among pirates and within pirate cities, Jack was exposed to so much of it that in many ways he was desensitized – but in every other, he was angry. He hated this life, was enormously bitter about his own treatment, and yearned for something better. He yearned for freedom – a concept he read about, and understood in his heart as the way men ought to be. He used what he knew of the Pirate Code as an excuse to run away from home – and in so doing, begin a life of adventure that would forge him into the man we eventually come to know.

Important Notes:

  • Jack learned to read at a young age; he was taught fundamentals by various parties, and figured the rest out on his own. By the age of seven, he could read most anything he got his hands on ( which while not much, is notable considering both his lifestyle and how uncommon such education was in the times. )

  • By the time he was seven, Jack was able to identify ships based on their size and design as well as determine the amount of guns they were carrying, to the point he genuinely impressed Gibbs so much the man complimented the boy to Teague.

  • By the time he was fourteen, Jack was fluent in English and had a passable understanding of Cantonese, French and Swedish. He cannot yet speak Spanish, but he can understand if it is spoken slowly, the general gist of an idea. He has a rudimentary understanding of Bantu – very rudimentary, but more than enough to insult people in it.

Disclaimer

Jack Sparrow’s timeline – much like Disney’s sense of continuity – is a mercurial affair. Due to the abundant lack of actual research and commitment to historical accuracy and character consistency done by the better majority of those in charge of Jack’s development ( With singular exception to A. C. Crispin who did, in fact, apply genuine effort to this matter ) the dates for any particular events are mostly guesswork and everyone has their own opinion on what goes where and when. Often what dates we are given clash with other works or make certain events utterly improbable for the need of characters to be in two places at the same time.

For that reason, my Jack’s timeline does not utilize dates but rather, fixes events to how old Jack is at any given time. This allows me to work with anyone, regardless of their chosen years and dates for events while also knowing precisely where Jack is developmentally based upon his age and what adventures he has endured up unto this point.

This is essential material, as many canonical elements are abjectly discarded from Jack’s history and may eventually be completely rewritten and linked here as a follow up headcanon. Refusal to adhere to character consistency will result in these moments of tossed canon – for me, A.C Crispin is the only person whose word is close to law, so efforts that contradict Price of Freedom are utterly ignored and designed based upon my ideas — this means my Jack is, inherently, as divergent as any other character I write despite including more canon than most.

This post precedes the barrage that is Jack’s timeline – going forward, his dossier will be updated to include the timeline /chrono tag, as well as have the corresponding timelines linked into the verses to which they apply for easy referencing.