#edward lowe

[reading-backstage]

fun fact: most of the information we know about classic pirates (blackbeard, anne bonny, mary read, calico jack) is from one book. and it’s more hilarious the more you know.

A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (or A General History of Pyrates) by Captain Charles Johnson

firstly: captain charles johnson is not a person nor a captain. it’s a pen name. and we have no clue who he actually was. he probably chose “captain” to give himself a sense of credibility he did not have. (could possibly have been daniel defoe or nathaniel mist and you can actually find modern copies printed under both their names)

secondly: he made a lot of it up. he gathered whatever information was available and just made up the rest and anything he thought would make it cooler. that’s not even to mention the second volume where he made up several entire people. this dude was just making stuff up and it’s now the earliest history we have of these people and we’ve accepted it as fact.

thirdly: it was initially published in 1724. (golden age of piracy was 1650s-1830s, dude was writing about the present) several of the pirates he writes about were still alive. and the rest were very recently dead. (henry every is an outlier) he was literally making up facts about people who were very much alive likely while he was writing it.

so this mysterious random dude made up stories about pirates who were still running around killing people and it’s now accepted as pirate cannon. amazing

[breathlesscathedral]

yknow what i see a lot of people hating on ned low in the black sails tags and kinda comparing him to a cheesy unrealistic villain or whatever and like. you're right even if i love him just bc the show robbed the character of so much potential

his violence was not overexaggerated in the show - the irl ned low was known for being incredibly sadistic - but it was misinterpreted. ned low had a soft spot for women and children and treated them fairly (and refused to force married men into his crews) because his wife and son had died and he regretted leaving his daughter behind because he cared for her. this is a strong contrast to the portrayal in black sails where he is gross toward women and mentions killing children.

murphy did wonderfully and understood this while playing the character, describing low as "sick and twisted but full of love." yet the character was still written as a blatant monster with little depth from the very introduction, and it just drives me up a wall in that it directly opposes the "men are not monsters until they are made that way" theme the show has going for it

ned low historically had twice the length of blackbeard's pirate reign and we don't even know how he died or what he did after piracy, so he could have had such an interesting story if they didn't decide to kill him off almost immediately after his amazing and seemingly important intro. the character deserved better than being treated as incompetent and one-dimensional for the sole purpose of vane and eleanor's arcs, and also the actor deserved more screentime !!

thank you for coming to my ned talk

[contac]

Ed Lowe, the inventor of cat litter, playing with a cat.

[fred-erick-frankenstein]

[owlboy]

Edward Lowe, whose accidental discovery of a product he called Kitty Litter made cats more welcome household company and created a half-billion-dollar industry, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Sarasota, Fla. He was 75 and had divided his time between homes in Arcadia, Fla., and Cassopolis, Mich. His son, Tom, said the cause was complications from surgery for cerebral hemorrhage.

[murdoofaolon]

Ned Lowe

Captain Edward “Ned” Lowe was born c. 1690 in Westminster, London, to an impoverished family.  Lowe (sometimes spelled Low or Loe) began pick-pocketing with his brothers at a young age and was well known as a thief and a gambler.  Lowe traveled alone to North America around 1710 and eventually settled in Boston where he worked as a day laborer and a rigger.  Ned married in 1714; he fathered a boy who died in infancy and a daughter whom he abandoned after his wife died in childbirth in 1719.

Lowe’s first endeavors at sea were honest ones, working as a patron aboard merchant vessels sailing from New England, until 1721 (possibly early 1722) when a captain saw fit to deny Lowe and his crew rations after they returned late from delivering a shipment of logs.  A failed mutiny followed and Ned and a crew of 12 men were forced from the ship.  The next day he led this gang in the taking of a sloop off of the coast of Rhode Island and began his career as a pirate in earnest.  Lowe would, over the course of the next year, terrorize the eastern coast of North America from Nova Scotia to the Carolinas before turning to the Azores and then finally settling into the Caribbean in 1723.  He amassed a small fleet of vessels of varying size and speed and was more notorious for torturing captured crews and setting unwanted vessels afire than he was for plundering and amassing goods and wealth.  In fact, Lowe was so noted for his cruelty that several members of his own crew referred to him as “a maniac, a brute.”  However, unlike Charles Vane, Lowe did adhere to a common, as well as personal, code of conduct.  He was not especially given to cheating his crews of their fair shares and he did not press-gang married men, nor did he torture or kill women or children.

Ned Lowe’s death remains something of a mystery.  He is most popularly believed to have been set adrift by his own crew, rescued by a French warship, and then hung in Martinque in 1724 after having his identity exposed to French authorities. Yet another belief is that after surviving a vicious storm, Ned made his way to Brazil where he lived out his days under a pseudonym.  What is known for certain is that Edward Lowe’s brief career as a pirate was both bloody and infamous.

Credits: Black Sails (Starz), "A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates" by Charles Johnson (edited)