Finally have time to reply to reddit questions.

Short answer: The Disney "Pirates of the Caribbean" world is a fantasy world that is loosely inspired by our world's historical events and just picks and chooses what it thinks is cool/will appeal to audiences. It's not accurate.

Long Answer: Getting beyond living dead people who are sometimes skeletons, gods, mythical creatures, legends come to life, and more - when trying to consider the accuracy of the pirates in the movie, it's almost an impossible task to start since they can't even decide what year it is. It appears they just picked aspects from different periods of pirate history and mashed it together the way they wanted. The way the pirates live and go about their piratical activities is all romanticized and nowhere near reality as presented in the historical record. In four movies, long ones too, you never see a typical pirate action. Meaning: a common pirate sloop goes and approaches a merchant vessel at sea, convinces it to surrender, and the pirates loot the merchant vessel of goods. One of the most common occurrences in a pirates life...you never see that once. I suspect it has to do with marketing heroes. Disney markets this pirate stuff to kids and families. It would be a bit harder to do that if they appealed to what pirates were actually like. This has been the procedure since the 1960s when they developed the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It was supposed to be a museum, but then Disney did research and realized how bad pirates were, and had no choice but to pursue the romantic (but unrealistic) version of the pirate world. It's why it's a ride and not a museum. Disney's POTC is not accurate because they're not trying to be accurate, they are trying to entertain. Want to know how they really lived in a pirate port, this article I wrote should give you some idea: "The Strongest Man Carries the Day" Life in New Providence, 1716-1717 (click here).