It’s on Starz, you need to start getting caught up NOW. Netflix has it.
If you hear the word “Pirate” and think of skinny Africans on driftwood boats with RPGs taking on unarmed commerce then this show will help fix everything.
Your notion of true pirates will be restored, with a little bit of historical accuracies and some gratuitous nudity for good measure.
If you suffered through the homosexual content in the original Spartacus (which was historically accurate but still not everyone’s cup of tea) then the meeting with Blackbeard will set all things straight again (no pun intended).
Interesting characters, well developed storyline, great writers.
Gotta check that out. I love Pirate shows. Do you know if they are going to have a season 2 of Crossbones with John Malkovich? I was liking that one. Hard to figure where they would keep going with it though.
I got Starz just so I could watch season 1 when it premiered, I was a big Spartacus fan, loved SOA, Never miss a episode of Vikings.
I just couldn’t get in to this show I watched season 1 completely, it bored me it tried hard to like this show. I just couldn’t, there were no major cliffhangers, and it was obnoxiously predictable. Granted the female cast in this show were amazingly beautiful, but having to deal with the rest of this show wasn’t enough to keep me coming back.
I didn’t see it on Netflix online.
I found it elswhere.
Watched first episode of season one.
It’s watchable and more gritty than other pirate movies. You do have to suspend disbelief about some things, like democratically elected captains, women having roles that smack too much a Kiera Knightly in Pirates of the Carribean that are definitley not historically believable, and little things like “dollars” as money rather than pounds or pieces of eight. Also, the girl dual-wielding cutlasses and being fearsome and deadly is great for a Hong Kong action film or anime, or Kill Bill, or Sucker Punch, etc. but really seems out of place and ludicrous in the setting.
I do think the pirates could have been more ruthless, and probably were historically speaking, but the writers have to be careful not to make them too viscious, or you won’t care about them as characters. They make them viscious enough to be believable without really crossing that line.
So far, the writers have not made me feel the zeitgeist of the pirate age, though they are trying for it. The little implausibilities keep getting in the way, as well as the fact that the writers seem to be undecided as to which central message or theme they are trying to evoke, coming close to several that could be profound, but never quite getting there.
However, I will have to watch more to really judge its merits.
The captain was elected by all the men in the crew and could be replaced by a majority vote by the same. Cowardly or brutal captains were quickly voted out of their position. Captains were expected to be skilled and dependable seamen. They were also expected to be bold and decisive leaders.
The first level on which pirates and women interacted was through purely business affairs. We often see, in times of war and other hardship that calls upon the entirety of the male population, that women often step up to work the jobs their fathers, husbands, and sons left behind. This was no less the case during the Golden Age of piracy, when many men were forced to set sail for economic reasons.[7] Many women, as a result, took up important jobs previously filled by men. They were allowed to trade, own ships, and work as retailers. Often they were innkeepers or the heads of alehouses. Some laws in seaside towns were even written to allow widows to keep their husbands’ responsibilities and property. This was important, as alehouses and other such establishments were spots where pirates congregated and traded with each other and with the people onshore. As heads of these establishments, women had a considerable amount of freedom in business. They boarded and fed pirates, bought illegally pirated goods, acted as pawnbrokers for pirates, and even gave out loans, something many men, let alone women, were cautious of in that time period. In this way, women dealt with pirates and came into possession of pirate goods.[7] When authorities came looking to arrest their clients for piracy, these women even sheltered them from harm.
On the third, final, and most intimate level of interaction, women interacted with male pirates by becoming pirates themselves. This seems surprising for quite a few reasons. First, there are very few female pirates documented by name, and the information on them is often shady and filled with speculation and flourishes rather than facts. In addition to this, pirates did not let women on their ships very often. There were not many conveniences of technology on pirate ships, and not many women were up to the physically demanding tasks the crew had to do. In fact, there were not many men who were up to it, either. Women were also often regarded as bad luck among pirates, and it was feared that arguments would break out between the male members of the crew about them. On many ships, women, young boys, and even different acts such as gambling were prohibited by the ship’s contract that the crew all signed.[7] Also, many women on pirate ships did not identify themselves as such. Anne Bonny, for example, dressed and acted as a man while on Captain Calico Jack’s ship.[7] She and Mary Read, another female pirate, are often credited with this act as if they had been creative and innovative in their cross-dressing. However, that was not the case. Many women dressed as men during this time period, in an effort to take advantage of the many rights, privileges, and freedoms that were exclusive to men.
In October 1720, Rackham and his crew were attacked by a “King’s ship”, a sloop captained by Jonathan Barnet under a commission from the Governor of Jamaica. Most of Rackham’s pirates put up little resistance as many of them were too drunk to fight; other sources indicate it was at night and most of them were asleep. However, Read and Bonny fought fiercely and managed to hold off Barnet’s troops for a short time.
I believe there are well-recorded instances of women disguising themselves as men to fight in both the Revolution and the Civil War, in addition to such figures from later American history as Calamity Jane.
Any time there is a frontier or civil conflict (look to modern Iraq and Syria, where Kurdish women fight alongside the Peshmerga and Yezidi women defend their people against the predations of ISIS), women will likely find themselves - willingly or otherwise - called upon to fulfill the roles traditionally taken on by men.
In any case, pirata est hostis humani generis. I think the idea that the pirates who once infested the West Indies and Americas are somehow “better” than those operating out of the Horn of Africa today is little more than an over-romanticization of the pirates who lived in the Golden Age of Piracy.
when I lived in the Caribbean lived on the island where some of the Morgans live today
hearing stories past down etc… and loving pirate lore having worked on sail boats in the islands a good part of my life always read a lot about pirates
google up brethren of the coast
finding out buccaneers (pirates attacking spanish) and pirates and privateers all have common things but are not quite the same but again cross over with meaning
maybe why where I lived they still hate the spaniards
for sure the links are correct about election and stuff women did have rolls and some were in certain positions of importance etc… some blended in some did not but were there own person
one thing about the island I was on and from history one of the old salty guys said it best something like
sure a man can hit his women but he better make it good cause she will come back twice as hard and vicious and in our past women could be vicious beyond belief so you best just go along with it
the island also the men sat around outside a lot and gossiped the most over women was good to be there when i was before it became to touristy and got to see and meet some of the older folks etc…
I like the show but its going along the lines of vikings IMHO starting to go stray to what it should be and making the characters to much of being a character and over doing it ? but still enjoy it
Horrible series. Esp Hannah New’s character, whose sole claim to fame is an ability to work the “f” bomb into every sentence. I wish I had back the time I spent watching it.
I stand corrected.
I honestly had never read of these things and was dubious. Everything I had ever read of piracy was from the royal navy side. Women, contrary to what the militant feminists would have you believe, did have lives, property, and influence before the 1960s; but I had thought, again, wrongly, that the pirate world at least was a man’s world exclusively.
This definitely increases the veracity of the show and my ability to enjoy it.
I do wish they would increase the amount of nautical terminology, but I understand it could be off-putting to a modern audience.
I’m into pirates as much as the next guy, maybe a little more. I’ll give it a try.
Anyone who’s on a pirate binge should absolutely read Under The Black Flag by David Cordingly and keep track of the Whydah display, a traveling exhibit of artifacts from the one true, known, American-waters pirate shipwreck (Cap’n Bellamy’s). It’s making the rounds of museums around the country, I saw it in Milwaukee a year and a half ago, great stuff. They may have two separate displays, not sure.
It so happens that the wreck site was under a test-firing range for the Navy in the '40’s. One of the most interesting pieces on exhibit was a piece if eight, coral co-encrusted with… a .50 BMG slug.
Don’t feel bad. I didn’t know half of that stuff until you prompted me to look it up. I recognized the name Anne Bonny from the show as significant, but didn’t know a lot about her. Given the series Spartacus, I assumed they would strive for a certain level of authenticity and not simply start making crap up.
I too assumed a lot of things based upon feminist indoctrination of the past. Maybe we should all vote to put Anne Bonny on that $20 bill. That would be a hilarious outcome.
