Tom Pullings

On the Surprise, the first lieutenant runs the ship day to day. When the Acheron attacks in the fog off Brazil, Pullings helps keep the crew together while Jack works out how to escape.

The boats tow the frigate into the fog, and the ship survives. Then the heavy work begins: repairing masts, sails and hull at sea, with no port in reach. Pullings is on top of all of it. To the sailors, he's the link between the captain and the deck. When Jack decides to chase the Acheron instead of heading for port, it falls to Pullings to keep the ship fit for the hunt.

The hunt for the Acheron tests everyone. At Cape Horn, the storm takes the sailor Warley. Later, in the doldrums, a crew stuck with no wind starts looking for someone to blame.

The target is midshipman Hollom, whom the men start calling a Jonah. On a warship, superstition can turn into mutiny. Pullings, like the other officers, feels the mood turn sour. The crisis ends in tragedy when Hollom throws himself overboard. The next morning, the wind comes back.

In the Galápagos, castaways from a whaler confirm that the Acheron has been through. The hunt starts, stops and starts again when Stephen spots the enemy anchored on the far side of the island.

For the first lieutenant, the whaler disguise is a nightmare of details: hide the guns, change the ship's look, make the crew seem like harmless whalemen. The Acheron falls for it. The Surprise opens fire, brings down the enemy's masts and goes in to board. The hand-to-hand fight is brutal, with heavy losses on both sides, but the French ship strikes.

After the boarding action that takes the Acheron, Jack needs someone he trusts to sail the captured ship and the French prisoners to Valparaíso. He picks Pullings.

Jack promotes him to captain right there on deck. It's the moment every lieutenant waits a whole career for. The Acheron sails with Pullings in command. Soon after, Jack learns the French captain is alive, hiding among the prisoners, and turns back to go after the new captain and the ship he's sailing.

James D'Arcy plays Pullings in the film. In the books, Tom Pullings shows up from the very first one, as a master's mate on the sloop Sophie, Jack's first command, and comes back through most of the series.