There’s pirates booty, and then there’s pirates BOOTY. How to spot the difference.

There’s an important lesson to learn here tonight, and that is if you ever start to wonder why there are so many porn stars on your boat, it’s time to ask a few more questions.

This one is courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times, but seriously, you knew that already. Something this weird could only happen in Florida.

Down in St. Petersburg, they have the actual ship of the HMS Bounty docked at their pier. It’s a local tourist attraction that is managed by the city, and frequently, movie companies that are in need of a location on a tall ship rent it out to shoot their film there.

So it wasn’t that unusual when a film crew requested the boat for two weeks last June so it could do exterior shots for its pirate fantasy movie. But things did look a little funny when the director sent a synopsis of the film, especially with the misspellings and bad grammar that you will notice below:

“The movie is a comedy Sinbad type of film in quest of a magical scepter with lots of special effects and sward fighting with skeletons etc ... It is not going to be released in the theater it is going to be on TV like showtime. As far as rating I would say PG-13.”

All right, he wouldn’t necessarily pass his English exam, but he did have the money up front, and sometimes that’s all that’s needed to get rolling.

However, when the cast and crew showed up, things looked (ahem) a little unusual for a PG-13 film.

The city rented to the film crew an activity room for cast, crew and equipment storage from June 1 to 5, at a cost of $1,872.50, and roped off areas near the boat for camera equipment.

After the first night, city officials got a tip that some of the actors on the ship resembled well-known adult film stars. When confronted by officials, film reps admitted the actors were popular porn stars who might draw extra attention to the project, but the film was definitely not a porno. The ship’s officials were in a bit of a bind.

“We actually looked at the concept of canceling it, but with the contract, I couldn’t do it for no reason,” said Bob Hanson, who runs the boat. “Just because they’re porn stars doesn’t mean they can’t come on the boat or walk down the Pier.”

What Pier officials did was have the director sign a letter, dated June 2, promising not to mention the Pier, the Bounty or the city of St. Petersburg in any credits or materials associated with the film. “We all felt we were uncomfortable with the perception,” Pier spokeswoman Susan Robertson said, “and perception can get to be fact by some people.”

Well, shockingly, it turns out that they were making a porn film called Pirates, a knock-off of the hit film, Pirates Of The Caribbean. This was an unusual porn film, however, in that it had a budget of a million dollars, (as opposed to, like, $50 and and an 8-ball), and actual CGI effects of skeletons fights and other amazing special effects, not to mention that they shot on an actual ship that was government property. Needless to say, this did not go over so great with the local residents of St Pete once they figured it out.

But when Pirates was finally released in September as a 3 DVD set, the response was HUGE. It had a lavish opening night premiere at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, which was covered by Variety, and quickly, the legend of the film took hold. It has since gone on to be one of the highest-grossing adult films of all-time.

The punchline, of course, is that now people want to see where the film was shot, and so what’s the hottest new tourist attraction for fans of X-rated films? You guessed it. The HMS Bounty.

Bob Hanson, for his part, was somewhat philosophical after he saw the film.

“I was fast-forwarding through the naked stuff to get to the boat,” he says. “It was an interesting story. I thought it was kind of good. I thought they did a nice job with it.”

The lovely coda of this story is provided by The Tampa Bay Times itself. At the end of this story, they provide a series of related links for you to check out more information. One of them, it turns out, is a link to a 30 question quiz to see if you are addicted to pornography.

30 questions? Man, I can do that in 3.

1. How many movies can you name that star porn stars but are not porn movies?


2. When watching porn movies, do you fast-forward through the sex scenes so you can get to the footage of the ships?


3. Are you seriously asking yourself this question?


Click on this comments box below if you need answers for this quiz.