Oceanic Pirate Projection Platforms (OPPP) – Serious Pirate Ships
This broad category of pirate ships includes bluewater-capable pirate ships, with a full 3-masted rig (ship or barque rig). Smaller ships with enhanced pirate credibility have also been listed as OPPPs, so long as they exhibit a frightful sculptural program or evolved “ghost ship” systems. In anything but a ship-to-ship duel against a royal warship (high intensity anti-piracy scenario) you are competitive in the below platforms.
Flying Dutchman LOA 200′ / 61 m TDISP unknown. This is the pirate ship equivalent to a Nimitz class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. This best balances pirate multi-role capability: it is an effective gun platform, pierced for 50 or more cannon of unknown caliber, spread over two gundecks; it has decent stern galleries, a terrifying beakhead/prow, and the most sublimely-terrifying, decayed aspect we have seen. The pirate captain has good accommodations space with those almost ogival turrets at the stern. This would be a good Piracy Information Center (PIC) for a the senior rogues. The whole sculptural program and layout appears to be closely based on the ill-fated Swedish royal ship Vasa of 1628, with her intricate levels of open quarter and stern galleries, topped with domed “towerettes.” The ship is slightly reduced with shorter gundecks. Some demonic yard took the design in hand and piratically upgraded it to enhance frightfulness. It was given grotesque, screaming gunports, a split beakhead/head rails that can reportedly devour smaller ships, and two triple-barreled, revolver-style bow-chaser guns of unknown design.
Really, this terrifying apparition has achieved area-fright capability. It scares birds away, it scares sea life, it is so scary mollusks won’t even bind to its hull. Is it the pinnacle of piratical power projection? Probable. It also was dismantled at its Castaway Cay base around 2010…or is that what its crew wants you to think?
Black Pearl/Wicked Wench/Queen Anne’s Revenge LOA 165’/ 50.3 m pierced for 32 cannon. This pirate ship was so successful that it inspired a plastic model, or maybe the plastic model inspired the ship. The design philosophy was a bit different on this: less guns, more black paint. Still, it was a more cost-effective option, which had good multi-role capability. This ship also offered good subterfuge/ruse de guerre potential: Brighten up the goth tones and you have a perfectly respectable (looking) merchant ship. Indeed, her backstory, from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, was that she was a (heavily-armed) East India Trading Co. ship named “Wicked Wench.” The overall lines of this small 2-decker, her generous beam and single row of stern galleries/lights, set on the upper deck, certainly do look like a merchant ship from the late 17th Century. The ship was also converted to play Queen Anne’s Revenge for one movie, which involved quite a bit of cosmetic work. That version had a much higher quarterdeck and poop, and an elaborate set of double stern galleries. After her crew was pardoned and allowed to live in the Americas, the movie ship, based on the oil-rig supply ship “Sunset,” was scrapped in Louisiana in the early 2010s. Her prow has been mounted in a nearby park, serving as a modern warning about where movie piracy inevitably leads.
Revenge pirate show ship, from Black Sails. LOA 220′ / 67 m This ship suddenly appeared in the middle of a film studio lot in South Africa in early 2014. It appears to be pierced for about 70 cannon, over as many as 3 decks. From the show, we know it was a Spanish warship. It looks to us to have a similar layout to the Sovereign of the Seas. 
Exxon Valdez from the 1997 film Waterworld. This is one of the most terrifying pirate ships that has ever been imagined. In the film, it was a kind of post-apocalyptical pirate mother ship. A 100′ / 30.5 m long model was built for the film. Years later, it was stored at the Mojave Plane Yard/ Edwards Air Force Base aircraft boneyard, near Boeing 747s. There was a movement to save the model, with an indiegogo site. Meanwhile, the real ship, last registered under the name “Oriental Nicety” was scrapped at Alang, India, in 2012.
The Searchers 