Pirates of the Caribbean filming locations: where all five films were shot

Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean films were shot in real Caribbean places, and you can still visit a lot of the Pirates of the Caribbean filming locations. The first film made Wallilabou Bay on St Vincent famous. The second and third turned Dominica’s rivers, gorges and beaches into cannibal islands and witches’ hideaways. After that the series left the Caribbean for Hawaii, Puerto Rico, England and Australia. Below: every real location we could verify, film by film, which ones you can reach, and which one our own ship calls at. (Spoiler: it’s the river.)

Pirates of the Caribbean filming locations at a glance

This is the table to bookmark. Real places only, with the scene each one stood in for.

Film	Real location	What it played
The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)	Wallilabou Bay, St Vincent	Port Royal harbor
The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)	Petit Tabac, Tobago Cays, St Vincent and the Grenadines	Rum-runners’ island where Jack and Elizabeth are marooned
The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)	Palos Verdes Peninsula and Manhattan Beach, California	Fort Charles and Governor Swann’s mansion
Dead Man’s Chest (2006)	Indian River, Portsmouth, Dominica	Pantano River, the way to Tia Dalma
Dead Man’s Chest (2006)	Vieille Case, Dominica	Isla Cruces church, graveyard and mill
Dead Man’s Chest (2006)	Hampstead Beach, Dominica	Three-way sword fight; Jack’s escape from the islanders
Dead Man’s Chest (2006)	Titou Gorge, Morne Trois Pitons National Park, Dominica	Chasm with the bone cages
Dead Man’s Chest (2006)	South of Roseau and Morne Trois Pitons, Dominica	Pelegostos cannibal village
Dead Man’s Chest (2006)	Sandbar near White Cay, Exumas, Bahamas	Beach where they fight over the chest
Dead Man’s Chest (2006)	Wallilabou Bay and Black Point Beach, St Vincent	Port Royal; coffins thrown into the sea
At World’s End (2007)	Capucin Point, Dominica	Approach to Shipwreck Island
At World’s End (2007)	Londonderry Bay, Dominica	Black-sand beach with the dead Kraken
At World’s End (2007)	Wallilabou Bay, St Vincent	Tortuga
At World’s End (2007)	Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah	Davy Jones’ Locker
At World’s End (2007)	Molokai, Hawaii	Final farewell between Elizabeth and Will
On Stranger Tides (2011)	Castillo San Cristóbal, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico	The fort in Cadiz
On Stranger Tides (2011)	Palominito, Puerto Rico	Island where Jack strands Angelica
On Stranger Tides (2011)	Kauai and Oahu, Hawaii	Jungle, Whitecap Bay, the Fountain of Youth grotto
On Stranger Tides (2011)	Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich; Hampton Court Palace	Streets of London; St James’s Palace
Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)	Queensland, Australia (Whitsunday Islands, Gold Coast, Village Roadshow Studios)	Most of the film

Sources: Wikipedia’s list of locations in the series and The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations. Where the two disagree, I say so below.

The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003): St Vincent

The first film was shot from October 2002 to March 2003 in St Vincent and the Grenadines and on sets in Los Angeles. Its big outdoor set was Wallilabou Bay, on St Vincent’s west coast, where the production built the waterfront of Port Royal.

Out in the Grenadines, Petit Tabac, one of the five little Tobago Cays, played the rum-runners’ island where Jack and Elizabeth Swann are marooned. The Tobago Cays are now a national park known for snorkeling. The fort and the governor’s mansion weren’t Caribbean at all; they were built in California, on the Palos Verdes Peninsula near Los Angeles.

Can you visit Wallilabou Bay today?

Yes. Wallilabou still has remains of the set, including dock structures, and the main set building holds a small display of replica props and production photos. Visitors’ reports are mixed: years of hurricanes and salt air have worn a lot of it down, so expect remnants, not a working film set. In January 2024 St Vincent’s iWitness News reported a government plan to build a Pirates of the Caribbean park at Wallilabou, about 20 years after filming. Check whether it’s happened before you go. Tours from Kingstown often pair the bay with Dark View Falls or the Wallilabou Heritage Park.

Dead Man’s Chest (2006): Dominica’s starring role

The second and third films were shot back to back from February to September 2005, in Palos Verdes, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica and the Bahamas, plus sets at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. The Dominica shoot ran from 18 April to 26 May 2005.

• The Indian River, Portsmouth. The Pantano River, which the crew row up to reach the witch Tia Dalma. Today local guides row visitors up the same river in wooden boats, about half an hour to a small bush bar. Guides point out where they say Tia Dalma’s shack stood. Here’s where the accounts split: a travel writer for Uncommon Caribbean says a shack was built on the river for the film, while Wikipedia’s location list says the shack’s outside and inside were both filmed on sets in Burbank. I can’t settle that for you. The river itself is real and on screen.
• Vieille Case. A village used for the ruined church, graveyard and broken mill on Isla Cruces.
• Hampstead Beach. The beach for the three-way sword fight between Jack, Will and Norrington, and for Jack’s escape from the angry islanders.
• Titou Gorge. A narrow gorge in Morne Trois Pitons National Park, used for the chasm where Will and his shipmates hang in cages made of bones.
• High Meadow and Twin Peaks, south of Roseau. The Pelegostos village where the islanders want to roast Jack.

Other Dead Man’s Chest locations: the sandbar near White Cay in the Exumas, Bahamas, for the beach where everyone fights over the chest; a water-tank studio on Grand Bahama for sea scenes; and Wallilabou again for Port Royal. Black Point Beach, on St Vincent’s east side, is where prisoners’ coffins are thrown into the sea.

The Kalinago objection

The Pelegostos cannibals were played by Dominicans, many of them Kalinago, the island’s Indigenous people. In 2005 the Kalinago chief, Charles Williams, publicly objected that the film was casting his people as savage cannibals, a colonial myth the community has long worked to dispel. He called for a boycott, and Searchlight in St Vincent covered the row. Garifuna and Taíno groups backed him. It’s a fair point, and worth having in your head when you watch those scenes. If you’re on Dominica, the Kalinago Territory on the east coast is the place to learn the real history.

At World’s End (2007): Dominica, Utah and Hawaii

Filmed alongside Dead Man’s Chest, the third film used Capucin Point on Dominica for the approach to Shipwreck Island, and Londonderry Bay, a black-sand beach, for the landing where the crew find the dead Kraken. Wallilabou came back as Tortuga. The pirates’ parley on a sand spit was shot south of White Cay in the Exumas. Far from the Caribbean, the white desert of Davy Jones’ Locker is the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the crabs carry the Black Pearl over the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in California, and Elizabeth and Will’s farewell was filmed on a beach at Maunaloa on Molokai, Hawaii. Singapore was a set on a stage at Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

On Stranger Tides (2011): Hawaii, Puerto Rico and England

The fourth film left the Lesser Antilles altogether.

• Puerto Rico. Castillo San Cristóbal in Old San Juan played the fort in Cadiz, Spain. Palominito, a tiny island off the east coast, is where Jack leaves Angelica stranded at the end.
• Hawaii. Halona Cove on Oahu played Whitecap Bay, the mermaid scene. The mermaid pools were built at Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu’s North Shore. On Kauai the crew used Honopu Beach and its arch, the Coco Palms coconut groves, gardens and ranches inland, and a grotto at Waikapala’e for the way to the Fountain of Youth.
• England. The Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich stood in for the streets of 18th-century London, Hampton Court Palace for the St James’s Palace courtyard, and Knole House in Kent for a prison yard.

Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017): Australia

The fifth film was shot in Queensland, Australia, from February to July 2015, at Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast and on location in the Whitsunday Islands and around the Gold Coast, including Helensvale, Maudsland, the Spit and Raby Bay, plus Byron Bay and Hastings Point just over the border in New South Wales. No Caribbean at all, despite the title.

A Pirates of the Caribbean filming locations map, by island

If you’re planning by island rather than by film:

1. St Vincent and the Grenadines: Wallilabou Bay (films 1, 2, 3), Black Point Beach (film 2), Petit Tabac in the Tobago Cays (film 1).
2. Dominica: Indian River, Vieille Case, Hampstead Beach, Titou Gorge, south of Roseau (film 2); Capucin Point, Londonderry Bay (film 3).
3. The Bahamas: White Cay area of the Exumas (films 2 and 3); Grand Bahama studio tank (films 2 and 3).
4. Puerto Rico: Old San Juan, Palominito (film 4).
5. Hawaii: Molokai (film 3); Oahu and Kauai (film 4).

St Vincent and Dominica are separate countries, with St Lucia and Martinique in between. Star Clippers’ January 2028 Royal Clipper routes split them: the Grenadines route calls at Kingstown, St Vincent; the Windward route calls at Cabrits, Dominica. You can’t have both in one week.

Which locations our ship visits, and which it doesn’t

Our trip, Mermaids, Pirates and Poets (Caribbean Sail), sails on the Royal Clipper from Barbados on 15 January 2028, on Star Clippers’ Windward Islands route. That route calls at Cabrits, Dominica, on Monday 17 January. Cabrits is a few minutes from Portsmouth and the Indian River, and the day’s shore stop is a rowing boat up the river, then Fort Shirley. That’s the one Pirates of the Caribbean location on our week.

To be clear about the rest:

• St Vincent and Wallilabou Bay aren’t on our route.
• The Tobago Cays aren’t on our route. Star Clippers’ other January 2028 Royal Clipper route, the Grenadines sailings of 8 and 22 January, calls at the Tobago Cays and at Kingstown on St Vincent, but its itinerary doesn’t list Wallilabou.
• Titou Gorge, Vieille Case, Hampstead Beach and the Roseau-area sets are on Dominica, but too far from Cabrits to fit into our shore stop.
• The Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Australia are nowhere near the Windward Islands.

We watch Dead Man’s Chest together in the months before the trip, so everyone has seen the river before we row up it. I haven’t done this route yet, so everything here comes from published sources, not my own visit.

Real pirates of the Caribbean

The films borrow freely from real history, and the Port Royal on screen is St Vincent’s Wallilabou Bay, not Jamaica. (The real Port Royal mostly slid into the sea in the 1692 earthquake; see the timeline below.) The real age of sail in these waters is easier to see at Nelson’s Dockyard on Antigua, a Georgian naval yard where Horatio Nelson served in the 1780s, and on a working tall ship like the Royal Clipper. If you want the sailing ship without the pirates, our guide to tall ship cruises in the Caribbean compares the options.

For the island itself, start with our guide to things to do in Dominica.