User Reviews

Black Sails manages each season to get better and better. The season opener already tried to avoid the pitfalls of most season openers, while doing what it always does, you win some, you lose some.

SPOILERS - The stakes are set high, and in 4x03 one of the major stakes loses its head, just not the head many viewers and pirates have been demanding. Teach's death did not come too early. It propels the plot of Jack, Anne and Woodes forward as well as their characterization. Season 4 is not about vengeance for Vane, but the ending story lines of the remaining pirates, citizens and Nassau. The keelhauling was brutal, well built up and made me shiver and cringe, while giving the "last laugh" to Teach. It's especially amazing, because it's a ten minute scene with almost no dialogue.

HISOTRY - While some cry foul on account of "history" and "illogic", I completely disagree, even on some of history that is cited. While it was Maynard who captured Teach, it went down pretty much the same way - Maynard kept most crew below deck, waited until Teach boarded and then had his men charge out. Secondly, the fact that Maynard threw the headless body of Teach overboard begs the question what reason Maynard had for doing this. The claim of 20 cuts and 5 shots comes from Maynard, after he allegedly examined the body. Firstly, it is possible that many of those cuts and shots were inflicted on Teach after death. And secondly, Maynard had a motive to exaggerate - a victor benefits from making his foe close to invincible (Caesar already applied that style of propaganda in his De Bello Gallico), because it only makes the victor more formidable. So, the historical "facts" may not be so factual after all. And then there is the legend of his headless body swimming thrice around Maynard's sloop. This does sound like an echo of keelhauling, and if Teach was indeed keelhauled then Maynard had plenty of motive to rid himself of the body afterwards and only keep the head for identification. So, what 4x03 shows to have been Edward Teach's end might actually be more closer to the truth than Maynard's historical log about it.

As for Woodes Rogers: I would not call him a failure, when he historically managed to prevent the pirates from ever re-taking Nassau, while a third of his forces succumbed to disease, the Navy deserted him and he had to take on personal loans to keep Nassau going. He also effectively repelled a Spanish invasion attempt. The reason why he defaulted was because of a conflict he had with a Naval Captain Hildesley of the HMS Flamborough. After the several HMS ships that had accompanied him to Nassau sailed off to New York, Hildesley arrived with the HMS Flamborough in Nassau to have repairs done to it, pretty much acting like a potentate and abusing the Nassau workers. Hildesley was also completely unwilling to remain and protect Nassau against Spain or pirates. Woodes went to Charleston to recuperate from illness, where he mete Hildesley again and the men dueled. When Hildesley returned to London he portrayed Woodes disfavorably to defend his own choices and destroyed Woodes' reputation. It's likely the biggest cause for Woodes' creditors to abandon Woodes, when Woodes sailed for London to find out why no help came anymore. He landed in debtor's jail, became the foremost source of the West Indy pirates for "A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates", written by the pseudonym author Captain Charles Johnson (most likely Daniel Defoe). The book was a piece of propaganda that bombarded Woodes back to national hero status, and the king appointed him governor of Nassau again and gave him back-pension even for the years spent in debtor's jail (in other words - the king believe Woodes had been wrongly used). Woodes was to be governor for life of Nassau. His second term was a peaceful and successful one. He died however, four years later of illness. And I would not call a man a failure for dying from say typhoid or malaria, not in those times. And while he was not a superhero, he did manage to quell a mutiny, capture 2 Spanish Galeons (in other words 2 Urcas de Lima) on his round the world voyage, raided Cartagena, saved the marooned inspiration for Robinson Crusoë, had half his jaw shot and was operated in Guam, and was one of the few sailors at the time who took a whole load of limes on board to prevent scurvy. He is also the man who originated the universal pardon plan, and tested the willingness of pirates to accept a king's pardon at Madagascar in 1715. The East Indy Company however preferred pirates on Madagascar than a company that might infringe on their monopoly. So, he executed the plan in Nassau.

LOGIC Teach's aim was to get his hands on Eleanor. It is likely that Teach wanted to capture Woodes alive, and force Nassau forces to exchange Eleanor for Woodes. This would explain the way he boarded Woodes' ship. Furthermore, in S3 it was very much established that Jack Rackham believed Woodes to be a soft boiled egg who "stood on a beach and said 'please'". He always underestimated Woodes' personality. With Anne captured as well, Jack likely believed that surrendering was the best option to keep as many of their crew alive. He would also have expected Woodes to take them to Nassau and treat them well enough, giving Teach, Anne and him ample time to plan a take-over. He did not expect Woodes to keelhaul Teach. So, what Jack chose to do, was very logical from his POV. Yet, it surprised Woodes just as much, when Rackham struck the colors.

This is one of the most brutal, yet amazing, episodes I've ever seen.

The dialog between Woodes Rogers and Capt. Berringer were amazing. The Governor's speech about what he did to the crew of the ship that killed his brother was so intense. The keelhauling scene was one of the most brutal scenes I've ever seen in my entire life, it was really hard to watch it, but Blackbeard was a bad-ass and survived three times. That "AGAIN!" is still in my mind. Another scene that needs to be mentioned is the last one: the battle for Nassau. The choreography was amazing and Hands showed how brutal he can be. Incredibly powerful episode, one of the best of the show.

The episode will be remembered for one of the most brutal and visceral death scenes in the entire series. However, the way it was written, completely undermined any emotion and suspension of disbelief I had toward the episode. I am referring to the naval battle between Blackbeard's crew and the Governor's forces and Blackbeard's subsequent torture and death in the aftermath. Armed with the larger and more powerful man o' war, Blackbeard and Jack Rackham devastate the Governor's much smaller and lightly armed ship. Blackbeard then leads a boarding party to finish the Governor while Rackham and the rest of the crew stay behind their warship away from any danger posed by the enemy ship while maintaining firing distance from their position. Predictably, most of the Governor's forces were hiding below the deck and ambush the boarding party. Blackbeard and the party are held hostage, and you expect a standoff between the still heavily armed and manned pirate ship and the Governor's disabled vessel because Rackham doesn't want Blackbeard to be harmed. However, in literally the next few scenes, Rackham with no apparent motive or reasoning surrenders his much superior position and crew to be boarded and arrested by the Governor, when he could have easily destroyed the enemy ship from a safe distance. Blackbeard is attached to a rope and the governor's men drag him below the ship's hull as his body is lacerated by the razor sharp barnacles located their. After repeating this several more times, the Governor executes Blackbeard with his pistol. So, what was the point of Jack Rackham's surrender again? You can say he wanted to save Blackbeard but he ended up dying any way. You can also say if he bombarded the Governor's ship Blackbeard would have died in the crossfire. This is true but at least he wouldn't have suffered from being torn to shreds and the Governor would have been dead (which was the entire point of the battle anyway). Keep in mind I'm not criticizing the death scene. In fact I'm all one if it serves the plot. However, the setup towards this one was extremely stupid and not well thought of.

Ignore the 10/10 reviews, they're absolute nonsense written by people with no ability to exercise critical thought.

Never in my life have I seen an episode of a show in which the script writers are more egregiously insulting to the intelligence of the viewers than this one. It's absolutely abhorrent, appallingly bad writing.

Spoilers: Teach and jack catch up to the governor's ship and fire upon it with the man of war's guns, mostly disabling it and killing many onboard. After this, teach leads a boarding party, but finds the deck of the governor's ship empty at first (save for all the dead bodies), whereupon they are ambushed by men hiding below deck (because the most hardened and experienced pirate captain in the world would never see that coming! Totally!).

Jack stayed on the man of war with the gun crew. When he sees that teach and Anne have been captured, they raise the white flag. This is presumably a temporary truce as both sides have considerable leverage over each other (one has the pirate leader and other captives, the other has an enormously powerful war ship that can blow the other to pieces at any time). This should have meant a stalemate until the two sides could figure out how to get past it.

It's not until a couple of scenes later that the show comes back to this situation and we see that the *entire* crew of the man'o'war has inexplicably surrendered their very big, very powerful ship and all of their own lives to the much smaller, totally outgunned ship of the governor simply because the governor holds hostages.

This is a disgusting, inexcusable insult to the intelligence of any thinking person who would know that any real acting captain (or any random crew member with enough cranial space to call them self a member of the human race) in such a circumstance would not choose to completely relinquish their (extremely significant) leverage that they hold over the enemy.

This seems to have been done for no reason except some wet dream fantasy the show writers had to use this as an opportunity to show off how brutal the governor can be (he keelhauls Teach three times before executing the barely alive pirate captain with a pistol).

Jackham surrendering to rogers is the most asinine thing I have ever seen in a series, why would anyone in the crew ever willingly put their lives at the mercy of the enemy when they could just completely destroy the enemy ship

Why didn't blackbeard just sink the governor's lame, tiny ship from the safety of his beast man of war? Why did he have to board a ship which was so obviously set for an ambush? Why did Rackham and the rest of the crew submit to capture along with the rest of them, when both sides had equal leverage?? The governor had hostages, but Rackham had a beast ship to sink them. Why does it feel like these supposedly intelligent characters just had their IQ'S cut in half??? Blackbeard's death and everybody else's capture could've easily been avoided if everybody wasn't so out of character! I had been quite happy with the direction of the show up until this point. I haven't experienced such a nosedive in quality since watching Game of Thrones.

Governor is in desperate situation, he is on small ship in bad state but he managed to capture the captain. Of course, he can not kill the captain or else Jack will sink his ship down.

Only hope for him would be to negotiate with Jack that he allows him to return to port with captain as prisoner.

On other side there is Jack, intelligent character, I was curious to see how negotiations will look like.

In place of that, in next scene governor is controlling both ships with some sort of sorcery, and he is torturing prisoners.

It does not make any sense.