I'm one of those odd people who will find inconsistencies in a movie. Fortunately I don't point them out to others during the movie, but the Mill scene as seen in set 4183 has got me wondering so I thought I'd see if anyone has seen a real mill anything like this.

Yes I'm aware that all of these inconsistencies can be written off as "It made for a good swashbuckling scene. But I want to see if there are any OTHER reasons for them.

#1 Location....it's at the top of a hill. The Mill has no water scource

#2 The wheel This thing doesn't look like water would turn it. Perhaps it is a Treadwheel (a mill powered by people) But I haven't seen one that looks like this. Have any of you?

#3 The bell....is this a mill or a church?

As far as the location, that has me stumped. But, in regards to the wheel and the bell, it can be explained. It's likely that it was a tread mill powered by people. Since it's on top of a hill that's likely. Many sugar plantation on Caribbean islands are on the mountainous areas of the islands, since the islands (mostly) were formed by volcanoes. That would make the land fertile for crops and sugar grows really well in that area of the world. If you didn't have flat land to build a mill on to process the sugar then you could make it a tread mill, powered (most likely) by slave labor. As far as the bell goes, plantation often had bells so that workers would know when work started and ended and if there was any reason to be alarmed. I would guess that the scene takes part in an old abandoned plantation on the side of a hill on a Caribbean island.

I saw a couple examples of mills and sugar plantations when I was in the Caribbean earlier this month and it didn't seem odd to me that they were built on the side of a hill since most of the island is a series of mountains. I hope that helps to clarify things a little.

It's more likely that it's meant to be a church: in the script there's some dialogue about how the Church set up a colony there, but that the people all got sick and died (the tombstones where Jack falls in the grave) and the pastor hung himself from the bell (you can briefly see his skeleton during the sword fight, hanging from the rope). If I remember right the plague was caused by Davy Jones' heart being buried on the island. You can see, in the scene, right before the wheel comes loose, that it's in a dry stream bed. It could be that Jones' heart dried up the stream....or something. I kind of fall into the "it's just cool, don't nitpick" crowd myself.

I think this set is quite accurate in depicting a caribbean sugar mill, it quite looks like the ones in old 17th century engravings about the Spanish Main. Indeed I plan to use this one with some modifications for my legodiorama of Henry Morgan's sack of Puerto Bello.