we’ve been rewatching Black Sails again (my third time this year lololol not my fault it was my partners idea this time) and last night we watched episode XV and holy shit this show. I cannot stop thinking about the handling of Anne Bonny’s breakdown.

Julian pointed out that if the GOT writers did this plotline, they would’ve had Max manipulate Anne, and Anne would’ve maybe hurt Jack when he returned. It would’ve been stupid essentially. But we have Steinberg/Levine and their team and its not stupid its amazing.

I love that Anne has to be brought to this. She’s so fragile, pointy and co-dependant on Jack in S1. You can tell she’s wearing the costume of “Vicious Pirate” and it fits, but not perfectly - there’s theatre in it, there’s discomfort. And when she has her breakdown after Jack leaves, after no crew will have her - she can’t wear this “Vicious Pirate” costume anymore and without that, without Jack, who the fuck is she?

She says it herself “If I’m not what I was when I was born and I ain’t what I’ve become instead, what the fuck am I?”

(i mean, part of my answer is “you’re a non-binary lesbian pirate Anne” but im not her therapist)

She feels fundamentally outside of traditional womanhood and feminine roles in this society - she tries it on when she puts on the dress and goes along with Jacob’s assumption that she’s a sex worker. Maybe if I can’t pirate I can do this? She’s also profoundly disassociated at this point, and Idelle stops her. But she’s adrift, and trying to figure out without the tethers she had before, who she actually is. She’s realised she hasn’t grown up, that she’s relied on Jack for too long, and that she needs to figure herself out.

And the reason this all works so well is Max’s reaction. A lesser show would’ve had her punish Anne, avenge Charlotte, manipulate Anne to become her pawn. But she doesn’t? She brings a profound, radical empathy and understands that punishing Anne would do nothing but perpetuate violence. And Max never perpetuates violence if she can help it. She knows that Anne is already in a totally lost state, and that to ensure she’s stable and not randomly violent, she needs safety and support. And Max gives it to her. 

She treats her so gently, she lets her rest, lets her talk, takes care of the dirty work and when Anne is ready, presents her with options. She knows that Anne wont have answers yet - who she is, what she wants, what her future long term will look like. But she knows that making her feel useful would help. And it’s not about Anne being useful as a brutal fighter - but as a sailor and procurer of spies. She can do that. And you see how Anne perks up at the idea. 

Max is so gentle. And while it’s not the result Idelle wants, it does keep the rest of the workers at the brothel safe - Anne never hurts any of them ever again. Max knows if she threw Anne out she would probably die but if she didn’t it would only harden and embitter her - and then they’d all have something to worry about. 

And it works, it works beautifully! Anne goes off, gets the spies, and continues learning about who she is. She returns to Jack, and reaffirms their non-conventional relationship - twins, lovers, soulmates, something between all of those. She continues her romance with Max, now on a far more even, trusting footing. Anne is finally stable - she doesn’t cloak herself in that sneering, sweary vicious pirate costume she had before. She’s relaxed, focused, still Anne but more comfortable in herself. She’s still violent in battle, but not this chaotic force you have to tiptoe around. The difference between S1 Anne and S3 Anne is incredible. 

And it’s because she’s done all that hard work, she’s grown up and self-actualised and become a person. Because she did that, when Max betrays her and Jack and she realises she would kill her if she saw her, it frightens her. She’s not chomping at the bit to seek revenge, she’s wary of the impulse and scared about her own violent tendancies. The part of her that grew up, and loves Max, doesn’t want to do it. And she ultimately never follows through on. She sits with it, discusses it with Jack, she has her recovery time to process how she feels about what Max did, what she did, and what they owe the other.

And when Max comes to her in Philadelphia, to apologise and commit to trying to repair their relationship, Anne returns the empathy and forgiveness that Max gave her in S2. They hold hands in the snow and you know they’ll be ok. They have this gorgeous relationship predicated on compassion, from the moment Anne rescued Max from the tent, Max nursing her through her breakdown, to the very end. 

Season One

III (1.3): Pastor Lambrick is drafting his Easter sermon, so the show begins in April of 1715 (specifically before the 21st, which was Easter that year).

     We know season one takes place over about two months, because:

Season Two

X (2.2): In Silver’s daily goings-on, he states the date as June 13th, 1715

      The rest of season two probably takes around a month-ish.

Season Three

        The time jump to season three is a little ambiguous, but we do get two pieces of evidence:

XIX (3.1): Mr. Scott mentions that Flint and Rackham made their deal over the Urca gold “those months ago”, so at least two months and likely more.

XXIII (3.5): The limit on how much time has past is set in a comment by Eleanor. When she visits Max in her old office, she tells her that she shouldn’t have moved the desk because in the winter the sunlight will get in her eyes. This means it’s not winter yet.

    With this in mind, I would place season three starting around October 1715, give or take.

Season Four

       Because the show’s gone all the way down the mythology hole at this point, this time jump is the most ambiguous of all. However, it’s pretty clear that at least several months have passed. What sets the limit here is:

XXXV (4.7): Jack goes to Philadelphia, and it’s the middle of winter there. I’d guess the latest it could be is March or April, but personally I think it’s February 1716. Why?

XVII (2.9): Flint tells Peter Ashe that he arrived in Nassau two months after being exiled, around February 1706. In order to correctly complete Odysseus’ journey, it would only make sense that the show would end exactly ten years after Flint first came into being.

Just found out that to shorten the name Oluwande, which means “God has searched/visited” in Yoruba, you would be more likely to change it to “Wande” and not “Olu” Sorta like how you shorten Michael to “Mike” and not “Kill” (usually XD) 

https://t.co/t9Kj1YKJGJ

However this means that whenever someone in Our Flag Means Death uses the nickname “Olu” for Oluwande - instead of correcting them to the more appropriate “Wande”, Oluwande just lets everyone call him “God” and I think that’s beautiful 🤣

Source: [x]

There is nothing in historical records that prove, for certain, they were wlw. Likewise there is nothing in the historical records that prove, for certain, they were straight. There’s nothing about their sexuality in their trial records. It’s nice to imagine them as wlw (and I have personally put that into fiction), but to claim they were lesbians for certain… Well, we will never know.  

The vast majority of details about their lives comes from a 1724 document called A General History of the Pyrates, written by an anonymous person publishing under the name Captain Charles Johnson. The book accounted the lives and deeds of famous pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy (1715-1725) and is highly, highly fabricated. Most of the lavish details he pays to Anne and Mary are likely made-up (such as Anne falling for Mary and Mary dissuading her by revealing her gender), though it’s impossible to fact check what is true and what isn’t. It’s thought that Johnson fabricated backstories for all the pirates in his book to play to the interests of European audiences who were really into stories about highwaymen, thieves and rogues in the early 18th century.    

The illustrations that accompanied A General History of the Pyrates originally depicted Anne and Mary without their shirts undone. The Dutch translation was the first time they were depicted with their breasts exposed. It’s thought this change came about because in the original illustration, readers couldn’t tell if they were men or women and the publishers wanted to make that distinction really obvious. Sally O’Driscoll covers this in her excellent article about the portrayal of criminal women in this time period called The Pirate’s Breasts: Criminal Women and the Meanings of the Body (The Eighteenth Century, Vol. 53, Number 3, Fall 2012.). 

This is the original illustration BTW:

The idea of women exposing their breasts to distract men in combat is a myth. Maybe a woman here or there did it, but it really is the fabrication of fiction.  

What is known for certain about them comes from their trial records:

They sailed with John Rackham (Calico Jack Rackham) and his crew during in 1720. 

They did not conceal their gender while among the crew. Eyewitness accounts from victims the crew attacked state that they wore both men’s clothes and women’s clothes, depending on what they were doing on the ship. 

They were competent members of the crew, wielding cutlasses and pistols and handling gunpowder with proficiency, and wore bright colours, indicating they could possibly hold a high rank on the ship. 

They were involved in the theft of a sloop called the William from the Nassau harbour on August 22, 1720, and a number of pirate attacks throughout the Bahamas and Jamaica in the following months. 

The majority of Rackham’s crew was drunk when Jonathan Barnet (pirate hunter) captured them off the coast of Negril Bay, Jamaica, in early November. 

For unknown reasons, they were kept separate from the men of their crew. Rackham and company were executed by hanging. 

Anne and Mary were tried together on November 28, 1720, before the Admiralty Court of Spanish Town, Jamaica. They “pled their bellies”, claiming pregnancy, and escaped execution. They were returned to prison. 

Mary died in prison in April 1721, and was buried in the parish of St Catherine, Jamaica, on April 28, 1721. 

It is unknown what happened to Anne, she disappears off the records after that. 

Sources/Further Reading:

Appleby, John C. Women and English Piracy, 1540-1720. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2013. 

Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. New York: Random House, 1996. 

Cordingly, David. Women Sailors and Sailors’ Women: An Untold Maritime History. New York: Random House, 2001.

O’Driscoll, Sally. “The Pirate’s Breasts: Criminal Women and the Meanings of the Body.” The Eighteenth Century 53.3 (Fall 2012): 357-379.

Rediker, Marcus. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-Maritime World 1700-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.  

Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

Stanley, Jo. Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages. Ed. Jo Stanley. London: Pandora, 1995. 

“The Tryals of Captain John Rackam.” British Piracy in the Golden Age: History and Interpretation, 1660-1730, vol. 3. Ed. Joel H. Baer. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007. 1-66.

Portrait of Captain James Flint

i know that the story was crafted with the intention of starting the characters on the opposite end of what they would become by the finale but i find it extremely interesting that the one character that loathed (and arguably feared) nassau the most ends up being the character who gets power over it instead of everyone who wanted it

The governor has knowledge of the cache, as does Spain. We are at risk. 

The missing cache represents a great threat to WR (Woodes Rogers) and Nassau’s current status quo. In the words of the Gov. “Give it up or we are all dead. “

Return to Nassau with the bearer of this letter. Pardon awaits.