Lady Washington crew relish 'Pirates of the Caribbean' roles

ABERDEEN, Grays Harbor County — Three seafaring Northwesterners got to dress as pirates and hang out with Johnny Depp and other stars when the Lady Washington played a British tall ship in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

Capt. Mark Griffin says he gave Depp a crash course in how to sail the Lady in Los Angeles.

"He's a very quick study," Griffin said, adding that the actor is fun to work with.

Forty crew members sailed with the Lady, but just three — Griffin of St. Helens, Ore., Dart Davis of Hoquiam and 16-year-old Esther Whitmore of Yakima — were with her for the entire adventure.

"It was a whole lot of fun," said Griffin, 49.

Their nearly eight-month voyage began in October. They sailed first to Los Angeles, then through the Panama Canal to St. Vincent in the Caribbean and finally back to the Lady's homeport here in late May — covering nearly 9,800 nautical miles. (That's about 11,000 landlubber miles.)

Whitmore, who completed some home-school courses on the voyage, got to practice her Spanish.

And when she turned 16 off the coast of Los Angeles, crew members fired off some cannons in her honor.

"If anybody ever tells me that dreams can't come true, I won't believe them," Whitmore said.

Griffin, who has sailed the Lady the past two years, says he jumped at the chance to sail to the Caribbean and cross another item off his lifetime "to-do" list.

There were ups and downs. A broken jib boom forced the Lady to make an emergency stop in Cartagena, Colombia, which made some of the crew a little apprehensive about drug cartels and the like, Griffin said.

Depp, who stars as Capt. Jack Sparrow, and actors Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley all worked on the Lady during filming. Depp's nemesis, played by actor Geoffrey Rush, spent most of his time on two other ships.

"It was strange seeing people you hear about all the time," Whitmore said. "I wasn't really sure what they'd be like, but they're all really neat people. They're normal people just like you and me."

There are three ships in the movie — the HMS Interceptor, the HMS Dauntless and the Black Pearl. The Lady played the Interceptor and was the only complete, seaworthy vessel, said Les Bolton, executive director of the Seaport Authority here. The other two were partial boats, sets for the film.

"We had a crash course in movie production," Griffin said. The amount of infrastructure involved — camera people, sound people, makeup people and many more — was incredible, Griffin said.

"I don't think I'll ever be able to watch a movie the same. If there's five people in the room, there's probably 10 different cameras in there getting different shots."

Davis found some of it boring — but there was action as well.

"We went out four days and found the roughest water we could find and put up all the sails we could put up," he recalled. "Two times helicopters followed us getting footage, and two times chase boats were behind us filming."

The crew also got to help with the stunts, most done on the Lady or with the ship as background.

Whitmore was transformed from a teenage blonde to a bearded pirate for one scene.

"Lots of the time we were up in the rigging working, just looking busy," she said. "Just a lot of background stuff."

Griffin and Davis say they're going to buy the DVD as soon as it's available and check "frame by frame" to see if they can recognize themselves.