“Shows A Lot Of The Chaos”: Critically Acclaimed Historical Show’s Opening Battle Gets Praise From Pirate Expert

Black Sails‘ early season 1 battle sequence earns praise from a pirate expert, with the series employing some accurate pirate tactics. Premiering in 2014 and serving as a prequel to Treasure Island, Black Sails depicts real-world pirate figures and fictional characters alike in a story that takes place around 1715. The show features a number of battle scenes and fight sequences, with season 1, episode 1, opening with Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) taking over a merchant vessel.

In a recent video for Insider, pirate historian Rebecca Simon analyzes Black Sails‘ historical accuracy during its episode 1 battle sequence, finding that the show gets a lot right.

Simon touches on the appearance of one pirate in the clip, offering up some interesting historical context, but also praises the show for its depiction of a pirate battle that isn’t “over-dramatized.” Check out her full analyzes below as well as her score for the series out of 10:

“A really interesting detail is that the first pirate who comes in, he’s got these teeth that look like they’re filed into points, and makes himself look really, really dangerous and really terrifying. This was actually a pretty common tactic pirates used. Reportedly, Edward Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard, he would do this by putting sparkles and candles in his hair and beard so smoke would be coming up from his head to make it look like he came out of hell.

“I love this battle clip because it shows a lot of the chaos that happens in a pirate battle, but also the organization. The captain of their pirate ship is Captain Flint. He looks at the captain of the merchant ships and says, ‘Wouldn’t you agree, the battle is done?’ And this is basically telling him it’s time to surrender.

“You’ll notice that no one was really dying in this battle. Pirates battles are often over-dramatized. The attacks were actually very quick and almost orderly. Pirates just wanted to get in, steal what they could, and get out as quickly as possible with as few casualties as possible, with the exception of a few particularly violent ones.

“I’ll give this clip a seven [out of 10].”

How Much Does Black Sails’ Historical Accuracy Matter?

Why It’s Not A Top Priority For The Starz Series

While Black Sails may feature some elements that are true to life, it features many others that are highly fictionalized. Black Sails chronicles the lives of real figures like Charles Vane, Edward Teach, Calico Jack (aka John Rackham), Anne Bonny, Billy Bones, and more, but its portrayal of these characters often doesn’t line up with real history. Bonny and Rackham sailed together, for example, but they didn’t ever sail with Blackbeard as depicted later on in the show.

The fact that the series doesn’t adhere too strictly to real history isn’t entirely surprising given that it essentially serves as a prequel to Treasure Island, a historical fiction novel written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island features its own historical inaccuracies, including a chunk of story revolving around buried treasure, a phenomenon hardly ever observed among real pirates (Simon also analyzes Treasure Island elsewhere in the video, pointing out these fictitious elements). All of this is to say that Black Sails clearly isn’t trying to be historically accurate in all elements of its presentation.

Ultimately, the goal of any movie or TV show is to entertain. Black Sails may have started off on somewhat rocky footing critically, but later seasons of the show were acclaimed. The Starz series accomplished its goal of entertaining, then, and it brought to life the Golden Age of Piracy with a more adult-oriented approach than something like the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Ultimately, Black Sails is like any other work of historical fiction in that it features a mix of accurate and inaccurate elements.