Stede shows he gets it within the first ten minutes of the show. Pirates steal to eat. It’s not the only reason they steal, but it’s a huge part of it. You don’t steal, you die. Food is life. So Ed pays his crew a basic wage. Their provision of food on the Revenge also is not based on the success of their next plunder. Hunger makes people ruthless, and Stede recognises he can’t build a better pirate culture on empty tummies.
Thinking ahead to this scene, when was the last time Ed ate anything that wasn’t earned through violence and plunder? Sure, he has riches these days gained through those means, so the mental pressure Stede speaks of possibly isn’t there day-to-day. Ed likely isn’t a week from starvation like many pirates. But he has known the pressure of it, since boyhood really. Food and violence are intertwined in many ways. So Stede’s sharing of bread and marmalade with Ed in such a peaceful moment is symbolically significant, as is the fact Stede got rid of gunpowder (violence) in order to store more of it.
Stede sharing food with his Crew and with Ed, which they have not had to acquire through violent means, is achieved through redress and redistribution. That ‘Stede’s kind’ took from ‘Ed’s kind’, and ‘the Crew’s kind’. Made it impossible for them to not starve through any other means than violence. Because most only steal food when the means of acquiring it honestly is taken out of their reach.
The maintop breakfast is a more intimate version of how Stede runs his ship. It’s a socialist act. It’s a redistribution of food back to those it was taken from. The plunderers aren’t who we initially think they are. Most pirates are stealing back what empire or capitalism stole from them. And a world that doesn’t see you as worthy of food doesn’t see you as human, so why should you seek to act as one? Killing in order to eat, to not die, is the desperate act of the dehumanised.
It’s why Izzy’s disgust at the Crew eating without permission after being ‘invaded’ is deliberately part of the script, as juxtaposition with Stede’s philosophy. It’s meant to teach us something about the weaponising of food, the withholding of which is dehumanising.
Here, take my food, is what Stede says to his Crew and to Ed. It’s not patronising. It’s a recognition of being born ‘fortunate’, and having enough to spare. There’s no strings attached. It’s an understanding of inequality and of basic human need. And that actually, it’s a better world if we act as community and no one goes hungry.
