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*As in a live action show that is not a miniseries, two part movie, or documentary 

 Analysis of Historical

Content inSTARZ’s

“Black Sails”Written by David Fictum

IntroductionFor the rst time in fty seven years, a new show* centered on pirates will appear on

television. STARZ’s Black Sails  premiered ocially on January 25, 2014. Enthusiasm forthe series led to the commissioning of a second season several months before the airingof any episodes (which will make it the only pirate themed TV show to run more than one

season). A viewing of the rst episode indicates plenty of entertainment potential andengaging of its audience. But, does this series, the story of Captain Flint and his piratesbefore the events of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island , have any merit in terms ofactual pirate history? Overall, the accuracy of the pirates, material culture, and historicalplaces in Black Sails are only slightly above average when compared to other Hollywoodproductions in the pirate genre.

The best way to discuss the issues of accuracy with this series is to break down thepoints of analysis into three categories, the inaccurate, the neutral, and the accurate. Eachcategory will contain a bulleted list of topics. This review will not go into much detailsconcerning the plot of the show and keep spoilers to a minimum.

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The Inaccurate

• Weaponry

  The rearms used in the lm are reproductions of muskets and pistols from thesecond half of the eighteenth century. While the intlock mechanism did stand as theprimary form of ignition system, pistols and muskets from 1715, 1750, and 1790 are notall the same. Beyond rearms, there are a mix of dierent vague or inaccurate swordsand boarding axes on screen that are dicult to identify at times, though the notori-ous brass cup hilt cutlass has not become prevalent as it has in other productions. One

gure eight cutlass (the hilt plates resemble the gure of an eight) from the Napole-onic era did show up though, which is also wrong for 1715. But, the use of such out ofperiod weaponry is the norm for Hollywood productions.

• Clothing   While the clothing normally worn by characters not carousing in parties look dirty

and drab (which is a good thing), it appears this clothing has this look not because ofaccuracy, but because it is an appealing style to audiences (and has been a populartrend in Hollywood for the past decade or so). Plenty of shows and lms tried to makethemselves look more accurate by using this trick, but that does not automaticallytransform the designs or the materials used to being automatically accurate. At leastin this lm, a lot of wool and linen cloth appears to be in use (or they at least give the

appearance of those materials). But, some pieces are hard to identify what they aremade of. The appeal of leather clothing items continues (especially in waistcoats),as do wide leather belts with big buckles, straw cocked hats (tricorns), and bucketboots. Also, turbans seem oddly present. One outstanding inaccuracy in clothing isthat Captain Hume and two of his crewmembers from the HMS Scarborough  are innaval outts from the later half of the eighteenth century. Once again, it is the samething Hollywood has done for many years, with slight adjustments.

• Other Material Culture  Other items on screen are also typical of Hollywood inaccuracies on pirate pro-ductions. Minor things such as glasses being more correct for people in the 1740s andbeyond and most of the onion bottles not possessing the correct shape for 1715 can befound throughout the show. The best way to sum this up this category is: This showis nowhere near Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World  in attention to detail.Overall, this show makes little eort to do any kind of material culture correctly.

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• Portrayal of Women/HygieneThis is a show on the STARZ channel. Female nudity and lesbianism is somewhat

expected from this channel for this kind of show. It has to be remembered that themost signicant reason for their portrayal in Black Sails  is to draw and please the maleaudience (especially the highly desired 18-30 male demographic). Practically all theprostitutes here are portrayed with nice clean skin, no scars or blemishes, and amazinggures. They are closer to looking like modern fashion models than eighteenth cen-tury prostitutes. So far, none of these women have signs that they suered diseases

typical of the day (for example, scars from surviving small pox would not be unusual).It would be surprising if physcical signs of venereal diseases did not appear amongthese women. It should be noted, there are still many episodes for these problemsto show up in. Diseases aside, none of the women appear to be average looking orbelow, which is surprising considering that back in the day (and today for that matter)prostitution came in all sorts of appearances, shapes, and conditions. These womenare idealized versions of prostitutes so they can appeal to the audience, and are nothistorically correct by any means. Branching o from this topic, the other main actorsof the lms seem too well groomed as well. Extremely white teeth on a pirate wouldhave appeared quite exceptional for this period (and for the greater world populationfor that matter), along with neat and clean body waxing. All of this is typical of Hol-lywood pirate lms and shows.

• Language and Terminology  The language of this show is not strikingly period sounding. While they haveavoided Robert Newton’s “pirate accent,” maritime “language,” or references toship terminology, seemed slightly restricted (though this can be attributed to a largeperiods of time in this show being spent on land.) The show contained other termsand phrases that were innacurate for 1715. For example, the show refers to ve million

“Spanish dollars” (worth £1,125,000 according to the 1728 Cyclopaedia ) in the rst epi-sode a couple of times. In 1715, the term “Spanish dollar” was not a popular term amdbe more associated with Dutch currency at the time. The Spanish connotation wouldnot occur until after the Golden Age of Piracy. Cobs, piasters, or even pieces of eightwould have been more accurate (and later a couple characters use pieces of eight as aterm). Swear words are often used inaccurately, in particular the F-word. The show

uses it beyond the context of a verb on several occasions. Using the word to refer tothe action of coitus is correct, but any other manner beyond that is inaccurate.

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The Accurate

• Portrayal of Black Pirates 

  The issue of how black pirates would have been treated on pirate ships is a ques-tion pirate historians still debate today. Some say it was a beacon of freedom to blackpeople in the Atlantic world, others say they were mostly considered property andfree labor by the white pirates. The historical evidence that numerous black peoplefound themselves still regarded as slaves by pirates is currently overcoming the free-dom perspective in pirate history. But, evidence still can be brought forward showing

some crews had black members who fell into a gray area. It comes down to were theblack crewmembers menial ship laborers that sometimes received weapons in combator equal crewmembers? More than likely, the ones treated as crew had the most valu-able skills to oer (such as prior training in maritime work and the ability to speak aEuropean language). Black Sails  also shows this vague mix of statuses for black crew -members. While some are shown to be full voting crewmembers on Captain Flint’s

ship, the Walrus , there are others who are still treated as slaves beyond this. When agroup of slaves are captured by pirates in one episode, they are still treated and sold asslaves back in Nassau. The Guthries still own slaves in Nassau. While the issue is stillvague at times, considering how little this issue has been addressed by other shows,this is notable progress on the issue.

• Pirates as Murderous Robbers   These pirates are portrayed primarily as men who are willing to murder others inthe pursuit of plunder. Attempts to paint such actions as justied are rather minimal.Overall, motivations and concepts about piracy are diverse and mixed. Some likeBilly Bones talk of democracy for sharing plunder and freedom, while others such asCharles Vane talk about simply making money easily with little work. Some talk ofsetting up an illegal system of trade to merchants in the colonies (in particular Elea-nor Guthrie), while others mention Jacobitism motives like Benjamin Hornigold. Inthe end though, the motives all appear to be driven by greed, power, and prot. Thismore selsh and criminal side of piracy that surrounds almost all of the show’s char-acters contrasts greatly with most typical pirate lms. To say the least, they are not,“The pirates who don’t do anything,” that dominated piracy portrayals in media forthe past thirty years.

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• Combat is Realistic   In all the pirate movies and shows that have come out since lm began, this is themost realistic battles depicted for pirates to date. The rst episode’s ght between

a pirate and a merchant vessel is well done. While merchants usually surrendered topirates to avoid needles bloodshed, this portrayal of one of the few merchants whochose to ght back is good in terms of Hollywood standards on portrayals of combat.The guns do not re explosive shells (something Hollywood often gets wrong), andthe pirates seemed to be targeting the crew more and not the ship. Ship crews are showusing the historically correct tactic of retreating to a more defendable positions when

boarded where they could hold up against attackers. The merchant crew mostly usedmuskets instead of swords, another historically documented norm since the musketwas the most utilitarian and easy to use for those not experienced with combat. Whenswords and melee weapons are used on this show, they are portrayed as being used bymen who did not receive classic fencing training or other formal weapons training.Sword swipes are used in combination with the st or whatever else can be grabbedrather than fancy sword dancing and footwork. Battle scenes are presented well withplenty of smoke, confusion, and ciaos. The quickness of the ght is also a nice touch,since most Hollywood battles are portrayed as long, drawn out engagements. Therewere no large top deck ght with a hundred men going at one another all armed withcutlasses clicking away at each other, no fancy sword duels between captains, and noheroic music to make the scene seem more impressive. Instead, horrid and sometimesanimalistic combat rage is shown. There is no romance, only brutality. The only im-

provement that could be imagined would be to also show the boarding of a merchantship via boats rather than pulling the entire ship alongside. Overall, an excellent jobwith combat that brings home the reality of a ght at sea in an accurate and realisticmanner.

• Pirate Crew Management Issues 

  This show brings to light the management and struggles of running a pirate crewin a realistic manner. For example, detailed dissection of making prot is shownrather than the old, “we have loot!” kind of line. Discussions of bring on new crewmembers, and the desire to recruit men with skills are aspects or running pirate shipsseldom mentioned by other pirate shows or movies. The power struggles featured onthe show are also intriguing. Pirate crews had plenty of issues concerning leadership

and power. This show also seems to hint that there are some men in the crew whomade more decisions and possessed more inuence than others (they also happen to

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be the speaking roles in the show). There is some gray area to control and leadershipat times. This is a real issue that pirates would have had to deal with as well.

• Nassau and Smuggling   This show presents Flint and his crew in operating out of Nassau in the Bahamas,in the year 1715. The rst view of the settlement shows a makeshift town for the pi-rates with a fort overlooking the anchorage. It is an excellent chance to see this at-tention brought to the Bahamas since most other media in the past century mixed inthe pirates of the seventeenth century with those of the eighteenth and portray PortRoyal and Tortuga as primary pirate bases of activity. Hopefully the Bahamas willcontinue to get attention in the media so as to correct the idea that pirates from theGolden Age of Piracy (as in the stricter denition of 1715 to 1725) did not operate outof the same ports as buccaneers from the seventeenth century.

• Ships are Reasonable Looking   So many lms and shows of the past used huge sixteenth and early seventeenthcentury styles for the vessels in their lms set during the Golden Age of Piracy. Thisshow produced vessels that look at least passingly accurate for the period. While theshow only a few three-masted vessels up close, they look better than vessels seen inmost lms. The ships do not have the huge beakhead on the bow or tall forecastle asseen in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. While the pirate vessel is obvi -ously a ship of force, it does not appear to be made by the lm makers to be a huge

open ghting platform for the cameras to take advantage of. Even though the mainpirate ship is large, it is not too big – some movies have created warships with twoproper gun decks (not just one gun deck and top deck guns) for their big pirate ships,something which would be wildly innacurate. These ships are marked improvementsfor depictions of pirate ships.

•  Kept Promises about Restricting Pirate Myths   In interviews and promotions of the show, actors and producers pointed out theywould not feature some of the pirate stereotypes common to previous lms. This in-cluded such things as parrots, peg legs, hooks for hands, eye patches, pirate talk, andpirate icons on everything. So far, the show kept these promises.

 

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Conclusion

Black Sails  bears many of the typical issues seen with previous pirate lms in concerns

to the material world and romanticism, but stands out in a positive way with its more ac-curate portrayals of pirate criminality and battles. In the end, the show’s accuracy is bet-ter when compared to most previous shows or lms, but only by a small margin. There isplenty of room for improvement, though expectations for any other form of mainstreampirate media making much progress beyond this are low. The “docu-movie” Blackbeard:Terror at Sea from 2006 still accomplishes more towards accuracy that this show (though

Blackbeard  has its own accuracy problems). Hollywood is in the business of making money,so some of the accuracy problems will likely remain for decades to come since the inac-curacies can also appeal to the public’s interest. But, the small eorts made in Black Sails  provides some hope for small improvements to a few of public’s perception of pirates.

By David Fictum for the Authentic Pirate Living History group, 1-20-2014