Hostis humani generis

Black Sails Sideblog of @bearfromthere | AO3: BearFromThere | Ship of the Line: FlintHamiltons | Sloop-of-War: FlintVane | Packet Ship: JackAnne

[brigantinebear]

Thanks to @thatbitchwhowritesstuff and their most intriguing poll, I am now being subjected to Charles complaining that a constant need for new stimuli and always falling into the trap of dissatisfaction is bourgeoisie bullshit.

Whether this is in the bedroom or complaining that there isn't anything new about town (plays, fashion, choice or beverage), it is all the same issue to him.

A fanfic might come out of this.

[psilactis]

I’m rewatching black sails and I’m having some Thoughts™

Vane went back to the island where he had been kept a slave with a very clear plan - get some slaves for “free” to help him regain power in Nassau, and repay Albinus, the slave owner through shares of his future profit. And then, he gets to that island and the first person he sees is a slave boy- one, we are led to believe, the same age he was when he first got the island.

He gives his proposal to Albinus, who, after realizing Vane used to be his property, agrees. This whole interaction is extremely stiff-Vane is clearly still terrified of this man. He seems to have done, his whole life, everything in his power to forget what had happened to him on that island. But then, when Albinus is walking away after the deal is done, Vane sees that little boy again. Reminded, yet again, of the horrors he suffered there, he decided to not let it control him anymore. He decided to fight back. Emboldened for the first time since getting his crew blacklisted by Eleanor, he gives a speech about freedom to the slaves, and gets into a fight with Albinus, whom, before giving the final blow, tells Vane he’s proud of him. This is another reminder of why Vane is who he is, and why he, up until that point, has made his decisions like that.

Defeated, he’s buried, but he’s not actually dead. He rises from his grave and kills his former owner, and from that point on, he’s a different person.

I don’t think we talk enough about that, it all happens in season 1, and touches so many thematic topics that are explored through the whole series: resurrection, anti-colonialism, anti-slavery, subversion of power, fighting your oppressors, attempting to provide a better future for the next generations, how your past shapes your actions, etc

I’d also like to point out how this parallels Eleanors death: instead of siding with his oppressor, like Eleanor did, Vane decides to fight him. This guarantees not only that he will live, but also that he is empowered by it, no longer suffering because he keeps running away from it, cementing, in the future, his legacy. Eleanor, on the other hand, decided to submit to her oppressors, and, ultimately, that led to hear death - not only physical, but also of character. She will never be remembered as the fierce women who once ruled over a republic of pirates - she is remembered as Woodes Roger’s wife, knitting and forgotten.

[diasdelfuego]

I thought this post was going in a different direction because the description of Vane’s closing s1 arc made me realize something patently obvious that I somehow missed during several different rewatches: Vane’s closing arc in s1 is the same as Flint’s closing arc in s2. I do have all my gripes with Vane which I’m sure OP does not care about and I guess that’s why I never really stopped to think about the parallel, but it’s clear as day:

They both lose everything or are about to lose everything, they are willing to make a deal with their respective villains, they are both reminded of the true extent of their oppressor’s violence, they both refuse to pay the cost. Or in the words from this post, they both go “from ‘high stakes elaborate plan to solve their problems in a peaceful way’ to ‘silent complicity in systemic injustice is worse than active violence, civilisation can and will uphold its claim to domination even when its lies have been uncovered, and it is fundmentally impossible to make peace with your oppressor'”.

And I think that Eleanor’s mirroring story is all the more poignant when you put them next to both Vane and Flint’s arcs, because Vane was never going to want legitimacy from England, while Flint and Eleanor’s goals were aligned until the very end of s2. But when they are both captured to be tried by the English crown, Flint declares himself England’s monster and rejects their morality (much like Vane will do one season later), while Eleanor embraces her position as an Englishwoman and begins to negotiate her way back into England’s graces.

[thatbitchwhowritesstuff]

can anyone tell me about their most unhinged Black Sails headcanons i am so bored i need to feel something

[brigantinebear]

Miranda would have been a great deal happier if she had lived in Kingston, Jamaica (given Port Royal's sad demise in the earthquake of 1692). There was no reason to trap her in the backwater of New Providence, far from everything she enjoyed in life. Kingston could even boast a theatre in 1715!

While James repurposed his naval talents as a pirate, and could salvage something of his former life and interests, Miranda had no such outlet.

I find it unreasonable that she did not tell James, I'm selling this godforsaken farm and moving into town. If you think it unsafe, I'll keep a loaded pistol and very large dogs. I imagine her running a coffee house, and collecting all sorts of political and religious dissidents, the kind floating around the Caribbean at this time. Somehow she would learn Max is literate and would hire her as a lady's maid, with an eye to future business partner.

It is a crying shame there was never a single scene of Max and Miranda speaking French, because you know that Miranda is undoubtedly fluent.

[thatbitchwhowritesstuff]

oh okay so now i am CRYING and THROWING UP over this

PLEASE someone write this fic. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE someone make Miranda fucking HAPPY.

[brigantinebear]

If the first newspaper in Jamaica could be published in 1718, why can't an adulteress and a whore bring the printing press to the Bahamas a few years earlier?

Such a venture requires capital, and Jack convinces Charles this is an investment. Besides the Barlow woman gets half her ill-gotten goods from us, we may as well make the partnership more official.

Jack is also delighted that the ladies wear calico acquired by the Revenge on its forays to the Indian Ocean. He voices it enough that Charles threatens to stay on Madagascar, where a pirate may still be a pirate, but his eyes still follow the swish of Eleanor's skirts, and he has grown accustomed to Miranda's Captain Vane, that affords him an unlooked for dignity.

The changes do not come all at once, or all successfully, but James must admit that Miranda is a better steward of Thomas' dream than himself.

[thatbitchwhowritesstuff]

can anyone tell me about their most unhinged Black Sails headcanons i am so bored i need to feel something

[brigantinebear]

Miranda would have been a great deal happier if she had lived in Kingston, Jamaica (given Port Royal's sad demise in the earthquake of 1692). There was no reason to trap her in the backwater of New Providence, far from everything she enjoyed in life. Kingston could even boast a theatre in 1715!

While James repurposed his naval talents as a pirate, and could salvage something of his former life and interests, Miranda had no such outlet.

I find it unreasonable that she did not tell James, I'm selling this godforsaken farm and moving into town. If you think it unsafe, I'll keep a loaded pistol and very large dogs. I imagine her running a coffee house, and collecting all sorts of political and religious dissidents, the kind floating around the Caribbean at this time. Somehow she would learn Max is literate and would hire her as a lady's maid, with an eye to future business partner.

It is a crying shame there was never a single scene of Max and Miranda speaking French, because you know that Miranda is undoubtedly fluent.

[bearfromthere]

"To-day, then, you do not breakfast like Diogenes, but consent to leave your tub."

"Yes, for the pleasure of your company. I shall also blow out the light in my lantern, having found you."

Hyperion: A Romance by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In James, Thomas found an honest man.

[bearfromthere]

Tortuga lies on the north side of the great and renowned island of Hispaniola...Many sea-crabs and land-crabs are found on the shore. They are very large, and are edible. The slaves and indentured servants often eat them: their taste is good, but they are most harmful to the eyes. Frequent eating of them brings on a fit of giddiness, so that for perhaps a quarter of an hour one is unable to see. - The Buccaneers of America by Alexander O. Exquemelin

Well, I had never considered that Jack Sparrow could be suffering from amnesic shellfish poisoning. Apparently it causes ocular dysmetria among other things.

[bearfromthere]

I sadly missed the launching of this ship, but I will be damned if I don't row my little jolly boat out to Flint and Vane's man-o'-war.

I could comfortably live in alternative third seasons for quite some time.

Do not enter the path of the wicked...

For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence.

[bearfromthere]

Colonial court records indicate continued and repeated piratical attacks from the mid-1720s through the 1730s. An Admiralty Memorial to the King in Council from 1730-after the alleged demise of Atlantic piracy-suggests granting apparently un-motivated naval captains and crews financial incentives to pursue pirates given that the "seas of America and the West Indies [were] infested with piratical ships and vessels which commit frequent depredations upon [English] trade." In response to continued depredations, in 1731 George II instructed the governor of Massachusetts, Jonathan Belcher, to commission British men of war within his jurisdiction to set sail to the host ports of offending pirates to demand-at the point of a gun-the release of prisoners and restitution of stolen merchandise. Belcher felt compelled by repeated complaints of "much damage and molestation from piratical vessels" in the Atlantic to outline and publicize the proper procedures for reporting acts of piracy to the Admiralty. - The Ocean is a Wilderness by Guy Chet

[bearfromthere]

I've begun to read Yoruba Trickster Tales by Oyekan Owomoyela, and it would delight me if people began to refer to Silver and Madi as Àjàpá and Yánníbo without any explanation.

[bearfromthere]

This will likely be my last Black Sails meta post for quite a bit, but I couldn't resist the desire to articulate this thought in public.

Some background information: It seems for the purpose of Black Sails, Steinberg set Nassau on an amalgamation of Jamaica and the Bahamas.

In our reality, the Bahamas was a non-plantation colony. Its soil could not support large scale sugar operations, and when cotton was tried post-American Revolution, it failed spectacularly.

The first attempt at English settlement in 1648 sent some of the initial intrepid spirits scurrying back to Bermuda, and an economy of "wrecking" (salvaging goods from wrecks) developed instead.

Various attacks of the Spanish and French depopulated other subsequent attempts at colonization, prior to the infamous pirate occupation. We must therefore imagine the historic New Providence as being sparsely populated at this time.

What is also true about this chain of islands is that the prevailing winds made it unavoidable for those engaged in maritime trade, including the trade of human beings.

‘Highway to horror’: 14 wrecked slavers’ ships are identified in Bahamas

Largest cluster of sunken vessels from the 18th and 19th centuries have been identified, bearing ‘silent witness’ to the colonial past

So just imagine for a moment an alternate reality where Flint and Vane's plan was to harry this traffic, and with the Maroons help capture these vessels and free their prisoners. Suddenly the idea to break the empire isn't so outlandish after all.

Although they would truly have become "enemies of all nations" by such acts.

[brigantinebear]

When my father arrives, I would like to propose to him that we don't hang the pirates. That we pardon them.

‘Surely, you know that’s been tried,’ protested James.

‘Not in the Bahamas.’

‘Do you think those men don’t sail to Madagascar? Do you think they have forgotten how we strung up Kidd four years ago? Men like Teach will spit in the face of your so-called pardons.’

‘We can’t know that until we try.’

The sereneness with which Thomas had answered was a match to James’ temper, setting it alight. 

‘Do you know why William agreed to sign that Act of Grace?’ he spat. ‘It wasn’t in imitation of Christ, I’ll let you know, but the golden calf of commerce. The East India company grew tired of being pillaged and some bright idealist thought that offering pardons would sway men from the pursuit of Mammon. And now we reap the fruits of his labours.’

‘Do we not face a similar plundering in the West Indies? Wouldn’t pirates turned privateer help the war effort?’

‘And why would men agree to give a portion of their prize to the Crown when they currently split it with no one?’

‘To avoid the short drop and the sudden stop,’ said Thomas, with a smile.

‘You can’t hang what you can’t catch,’ retorted James. 

‘You’re completely against me, then?’ 

‘I’m against you springing this on me in the eleventh hour. You speak of partnership, Thomas, yet set this ambush, as crafty a spider as any that sit in Whitehall. Do not do me the disservice of pretending you conceived of the idea recently.’

‘No,’ conceded Thomas, ‘but I had hoped to speak with the Lord Commissioners for Trade and Plantation before submitting the thought to your scrutiny. My father’s unannounced arrival accelerated the need for your good sense.’

‘Then take my good sense and forget the notion entirely. Present what we planned to your father. Afterwards, if you cannot drive such inanities from that mulish head of yours, look for support, starting with Robert Quary. God knows you two will have enough in common.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘He is as enamoured of pirates as you are. And some would say, no different than a common smuggler. Pardoning his compatriots would be within his interests.’

‘Were we not trying to end corruption, rather than embolden it?

‘I was, but you? You have it in your head that all Men have some claim to goodness, and the naivete has addled you.’

Thomas, to his credit, took the insult with a gentleman’s placidity. ‘I must believe that there is more to us than selfishness and strife, for if that were so, what says it of God, in whose image we have been made?’ 

‘That the sins of the father are perpetuated in the son.’ James sighed. ‘Thomas, what you want must be achieved by the hands of men, not of angels. If your goal is to see fewer men hanged, then you must appeal to those who wish the same outcome, without regard to their motive.’

‘You would see me build our new kingdom on a cracked foundation?’

‘I would see you build it at all!’ James rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly weary of more than the conversation. ‘You don’t know them,’ he said at last. ‘You haven’t lived with them. You have yet to see their pettiness. Their brutality. It is not given for a chalice of gold to understand a cup of clay. You cannot imagine the smallness in which these people live.’

‘And yet, be it gold or clay the vessel can still hold the best wine of the wedding feast. Don’t you see, James? That is what I would fill them with. But I cannot do that if you take Nassau with fire and sword. For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?’

‘Do you believe they will thank you?’ asked James in bitter amusement. ‘These are men who run from the sight of honest labour. Who prefer to be inebriated for as many hours as there are in a day. And if the choice was between their better interest and a wild lark, they choose the jape of today, no matter what it costs them on the morrow. They have no need of you or your Christ.’

‘All men–’

‘Thomas, if you wish to sermonize, become a vicar. If you wish to save Nassau, you must rescue her from her captors.’

‘You see no other way?’

‘I do not.’

‘Well then, you have convinced me of one thing,’ said Thomas.

‘And what is that?’

‘That I cannot tilt with two dragons in the drawing room. Not until I have convinced my man-at-arms to ride with me.’ 

‘Which would reduce the number of dragons by half,’ said James with a begrudging smile of his own. 

‘Precisely. Now let us find you something to wear. Those boots haven’t been in fashion since before Charles lost his head.’

‘Is your father truly going to judge me by my footwear?’

‘In a word, yes.’

‘Then by all means, let us leave no doubt that I am a True-Born Englishman.’

‘I’ll make you the best of us “vane ill-natured things”, Lieutenant McGraw.’ 

‘Don’t let me steal your laurels.’ 

‘Borrow, my good sir, borrow.’ 

A/N:

King William III had issued a general pardon for pirates in 1698.

There was no legitimate government in New Providence since 1703. The Lord Proprietor of the Carolinas would still appoint a 'proprietary governor of the Bahamas' in name, but in actuality they hadn't set foot there in years.

Robert Quary was appointed the Surveyor General of Customs in the Americas, even though he had been accused of conspiring with pirates.

Thomas quotes from Psalm 6.

Bucket-top boots had been out of fashion since the mid-17th century and were never worn indoors at this time.

Both men are alluding to Defoe's satirical poem A True-Born Englishman which was published in 1701.

All these their barb'rous offspring left behind,

The dregs of armies, they of all mankind;

Blended with Britons, who before were here,

Of whom the Welch ha' blest the character.

From this amphibious, ill-born mob began,

That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman.

[bearfromthere]

'Have you given this any thought at all?'

And with that question the curtain falls on our play. John Silver stands before me stripped of pretense. I can see the costume of Thomas Hamilton slip from his person, and where it now lies, in disrepair, I see too a delusion wrought by my own loneliness.

What a monumental fool you are, James.

I can only be James in this moment, for it is James who is filled with this weakness -this need- for a mind that sails in consort with his own. Captain Flint has inured himself to the misconstruance of his every action, or is that but another lie I have blinded myself with? Have the mask and the man long since merged into a single, malformed creature, possessing the shortcomings of both? 

Silver waits in a silence worn thin by my ponderances. There is doubt in his face that he would have soothed, yet what succour is mine to give is unripe and sour. It cannot be swallowed in easy drams.  

Thomas understood.

Clever, combative Thomas, who bandied with Molesworth and Milton as if the words they left could proffer debate in return. Unrelenting Thomas, who could wrest with even the great Leviathan. Beloved Thomas, my phantom limb who makes me more a cripple than this man before me.

Have you given this any thought at all?

When have I not thought of it? Floating here amidst the wreckage of my life, surrounded by the flotsam of ruined ambitions, there is nought to do but -think-. 

But it is not the accusation that I am a mad tyrant gormlessly driving us to the brink, which robs me of the strength to stand. It is the task Silver has set before me, to distill a lifetime of study into a gill of truth, that proves I am no Atlas.

My body finds something firm to lean against, while my mind sees again the tattered costume of Thomas, and how ill-fitting it was for John Silver. In the warp and weft of the dissemblance is the assumption of things shared beginning with a common history. How is it that this master of men, blessed with the guile of a Florentine, is so ill-formed and crude a philosopher?

Still he waits, having ceded this silence to me, and so I am forced to grope along labyrinthine paths of thought in the hopes our partnership may escape this minotaur of his conjuring. There in that darkness my hand closes around a thread and I begin to follow it, 'If we are to truly reach a moment where we might be finished with England...'