Pirate Crew

Pirate Crew
Background information
Short films	King Neptune
Group information
Members	Various unnamed pirates
Status	Missing

The Pirate Crew are the main antagonists of the 1932 Silly Symphony short King Neptune.

Background

They are an all-male crew of pirates often showing a sadistic personality during their duties as pirates, especially during their attempts to capture a mermaid throughout their voyage on the ocean. They are shown to work together as a group, especially when the fight back against the sea creatures, and despite this, they even failed to defeat the sea creatures as a team. They even showed a cowardly personality whenever imminent dangers occurred during the battle such as when the creatures attacked them and when King Neptune created a storm to teach them a lesson.

Role in the short

The pirates are first seen having a rowdy moment on their ship while the first mate sees a group of mermaids on a rock. As he alerts the pirates that he found a woman they could fall in love with, they capture a singular mermaid, unaware that their anchor hit King Neptune underwater. Upon capturing a blonde-haired mermaid, the other mermaids begin to sound the alarm that one of them was captured while the captured mermaid fights back. As a result, various sea creatures consisting of assorted fish, sea turtles, swordfish, lobsters, octopi, seahorses, and others, begin an all-out attack to fight off the pirates.

As the sea creatures begin to attack, the pirates fight back by firing cannons at the sea creatures, while some turtles begin to counter their attacks, followed by flying fish deploying lobsters onto the pirates throughout an ambush. As another pirate prepares to attack using his pistol, an octopus dispatches him and wears his boots and hat, as he arms himself with makeshift swords (and later pistols) while fighting off the pirates, causing many of them to retreat onto the crow's nest. However, due to many pirates standing onto the mast, this results them to fall into the ocean where they are attacked by electric eels while another octopus loads cannonballs onto another fish to pelt the pirates with projectiles, just as the sea creatures continue to attack while Neptune frees himself from the anchor and chain the pirates put on him. In revenge, Neptune creates a strong storm to to give payback to the pirates, causing their ship to sink while the other sea creatures back away. Afterwards, there is no trace of them aside from a chest where the blonde-haired mermaid frees herself from the treasure chest where the pirates locked her up, as all the other mermaids feel happy that they found treasures inside the chest.

Trivia

• The scene where the pirates fight against King Neptune at the end of the short was used as an animation reference for the 1989 Disney animated feature film The Little Mermaid, specifically for the scene where Prince Eric fights against Ursula.