Dead Eye/Introduction

You best start believin' in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!

- Captain Hector Barbosa, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

xxxxxBorn in the year of our Lord, August 11, 1631, in Casares, Spain, in life Antonio “Dead Eye” de Contreras followed in his father’s bloody footsteps, taking to the seas at the young age of seven to serve as a cabin boy aboard a privateer hired by the Spanish government. As an adult, he was made a Captain by the King of Spain, Charles II, in 1670 and commissioned to raid merchant vessels operated by the various East India Companies in the waters of the South Pacific. Gifted by the King what would become his beloved frigate, the Angel de Muerte, Captain Dead Eye gathered his crew and became infamous as one of the great scourges during his three decades long stint as pirate king. Ultimately, as the world shrank, and as Spain’s influence waned, he finally met his well deserved demise at the battle of Ta’u, on November 2, 1700, where he, his crew, and his ship were utterly obliterated by a hail of canon fire sent courtesy of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy and several mercenary-owned sloops.

xxxxxThe moniker “Dead Eye” was given to Captain Antonio de Contreras in part due to his uncanny pokerface. A gambling man, the Captain was well known for being unable to turndown a wager, and his stoic visage and unfeeling “dead” eyes made it exceptionally difficult to discern when he was bluffing.