#sail boston

[hella1975]

noah kahan really said growing up in a small, bitter hometown is about the rage and the hatred that's been sung about many times before but it's also about love and devotion and the 'all three of us were drowning and we didn't know how to save each other but there was an understanding that we were all drowning together' of it all and knowing people so intimately yet not being able to help anyone and he's morally grey at best in a lot of his songs and objectively the bad guy in others and that's just how it is and it's about substance abuse and normalised crime and teen suicide and country roads and failed exams and leaving and being left and love and hate and love and hate and love and

[ltwilliammowett]

USS Constitution

[benjhawkins]

Robert Salmon, “Boston Harbor, Long and Central Wharves” (detail), 1832.

[natattitude]

WHOA HEY WAIT YOU'RE FRIENDS WITH MATT??

THIS MATT??????

Yeah! (I think! The hair is different, and there’s a lot of Matt’s out there, so I’ve added the panels you did of the Matt I know)

We went to the same college, albeit a few years apart but we both work in theater and now that I live in Brooklyn he visits me sometimes!

My dad grew up sailing and I love theater’s connection to it

[clove-pinks]

"Champion of the Seas," East Boston. Photograph by Southworth and Hawes (American, active 1843–62), about 1854.

Her name is given as Champion of the Sea in the Monthly Nautical Magazine, and Quarterly Review of 1855.

[shadelesssocket]

Robert Salmon

Boston Harbor from Constitution Wharf, 1833

[etoilesombre]

hi! this is maybe very out of the blue, but - i'm reading 'our feast is but beginning' on ao3, and in a comment on part one you write something about the urca gold being a cursed symbol and that it makes zero economical sense. idk really what i am asking but maybe - do you have posts on hand that deal with that? or would you write down some of your thoughts on that? it sounds really interesting! thanks (:

OOOH I'm so excited to talk about this -- it is actually going to come up more in the final chapter of that series, and it comes up as a major plot point in longfic, because I think its a really great example of how in some ways Black Sails is Just a Story. Which is also to say: none of what I'm saying here is a criticism of the show. The Urca Gold is Pirate Treasure writ large, it serves its function in the narrative, we don't actually need to think about the real world implications of stealing it.

But IF, for instance, you were a fanfic writer and kind of a history and econ nerd, and inclined to 'well actually' stuff, then you might see a couple problems with the gold as a solution for a free and independent Nassau. I think of them basically as problems of scale and form.

Let's talk about scale first. Basically, if you are going to steal and not die, you have to make a few calculations.

If you can steal something big, run away and live anonymously ever after, good for you! No problems. (This was Silver's initial plan. He was smart.)

If, however, you are going to steal openly, and maintain some sort of defended home base (see: bandits, organized crime, pirates) you have to ensure it is not worthwhile for people to come get their stuff back. This is why, as a pirate, it behooves you to have a reputation for extreme violence, and also a remote hideout. Merchant ships have insurance, the right people quietly profit from the fencing of pirated goods; nobody actually wants to die, so piracy is cost of doing business, and the world carries on.

The Urca gold is in a completely different class of stealing. This isn't holding up a truck; it isn't robbing the bank. It's robbing the Federal Reserve. Five million Spanish dollars, in today's money (yes, there are issues thinking of it this way, but the point holds) equals somewhere around 250-300 million US dollars.* There is simply no way that it is not worth Spain's (or England's) time and resources to go get it back. The cache they were fighting over at the end was one share and it was enough to cause all that trouble. The full amount would be worth sending a good chunk of your navy for, and the fact that this did not happen immediately requires some suspension of disbelief. Anyway.

Flint's theory seems to be that it's enough money to allow the pirates to defend Nassau against that threat, and basically establish themselves as a rich colony the empires won't fuck with. This is treated by the show like a reasonably serious proposition. So why does it fall apart? You can buy anything with that kind of money, can't you?

Now we get to the problem of form. Gold is only useful if you can exchange it for stuff you need. This is a problem for the pirates on two different fronts, defense specifically and trade in general.

In terms of defense, the pirates would need, very quickly, enough ships and guns to fight at least one imperial navy. But only the major powers were capable of manufacturing those ships and guns. Even if the pirates bought up all they could in terms of well-armed merchant ships/found a corrupt governor or two to buy guns and powder from, it would always be a losing battle because no matter how much money you throw at them, the powers that make warships are absolutely not selling you any. Why would they, when they can use them to come take the gold instead?

So, if the pirates aren't going to live long once they have this gold, can they at least spend their last months being filthy rich and enjoying themselves?

Not really.

We see Jack's crew members getting huge shares, everyone else on the island taking payment to help with defense when the time comes, as well as Jack paying laborers exorbitant amounts. So there's plenty to go around right?

This is how inflation happens. If we all suddenly have twice as much gold, but there is no more actual physical stuff, almost instantly the stuff will cost twice as much. This problem at least theoretically could be corrected by increasing trade. [Also, realistically, people would leave. But let's say they're staying for belief in the pirate republic reasons.] Because in the wider economy of trade in the Atlantic money is still valued normally, you can just import what you need.

And, maybe. This is more plausible than the rest.

But that sort of correction takes time, and given the whole 'war with civilization' situation, there can't be legitimate and sanctioned trade. It's pretty hard to get enough illegitimate goods in for an economy to prosper --- especially because if you're relying on black market trade during wartime, notoriously there ends up being price gouging and then you're back to square one with inflation.

In conclusion: the show does not get bogged down by this, as it shouldn't. It's fine. But yeah, the gold is fake and makes no sense, and Flint and Jack especially are borderline delusional about what it can achieve for them.

*This is actually not as impressive as I wanted it to be, once I started looking up reference points, eg, how much outstanding student debt is there? how much money does besos have? how much is defense spending? Did y'all know we should fight capitalism and eat the rich?

[a-solitary-sea-rover-backup]

This morning was pouring rain and miserable, and the wind was so light the umpires told us to scull, paddle, and anything else necessary in order to actually get back to the dock, but when the sun broke through the clouds, everything was beautiful.

[athleticperfection1]

Boston College Sailing

[myths-tournaments]

Awful Characters Round 2 Part 1 (4/8)

Propaganda under the cut!

CAPTAIN JAMES FLINT

I mean there’s a whole video floating around on tumblr where OFMD fans call this man a terrorist LOL Does whatever it takes- literally whatever it takes- to push his agenda. Even if (in his opinion) it is overall for the good of the crew, he will cut anyone down to get there. Literally kills a man in a fist fight in the first episode. Had the worst sex I’ve ever seen on TV. Pushes Billy over board multiple times. Lies about the pig being cooked to save Silver from the crew.

BOSTON

look this man is destroying everyone around him including himself and is such a character. he's stringing along his fuck buddy into thinking that they can have something more together one day simply because he likes the attention, he's trying to sabotage his friend's first serious romantic relationship because he's obsessed with beating him in everything, he's manipulating his friend's new boyfriend into having sex with him for that same reason, he's trying to convince his other friend to sleep with the first friend because he knows the other friend has feelings for the first friend and he wants to get the first friend out of the way. it remains to be seen if he actually likes any of his friends or if they all just simply hang out together because they're all gay and met early on in college.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

in other news,,

[thevalleyisjolly]

I have zero involvement or investment in whatever hell the pirate fandom’s been apparently raising, but all I’ll say is that clearly the best pirates are the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything.

[ltwilliammowett]

“Daniel Webster” of Boston off Sandy Hook, by John Stobart (1929-2024)

[kaiyves-backup]

I’m not saying people from the absolute farthest corners of the world are coming to Boston to walk the Freedom Trail on Independence Day weekend, but yesterday an old guy wearing an Emirates Team New Zealand t-shirt came to our Town Meeting program.

[postgraduate]

bebe neuwirth joining the frasier reboot has given me major cognitive dissonance

[clove-pinks]

A serendipitous find: the Autumn 2020 issue of Sea History, publication of the National Maritime Historical Society of New York, with the article "Freedom and Whaling on Nantucket" by Skip Finley. It's all about Black and mixed race mariners, whalers, and shipowners on the island.

Sampson Dyer, early 19th century. A free man of Black and Wampanoag descent, he engaged in the China Trade and commissioned this portrait from the Chinese artist Spoilum, "who specialized in European-style paintings in oil of sea captains and both Chinese and Western merchants."

Captain Absalom F. Boston, by unknown artist c. 1835. A successful whaling captain and businessman, he also supported anti-slavery abolitionists and helped build a church and a school.

Arthur Cooper, portrait by Sally Gardner c. 1830. Cooper had been enslaved in Virginia and escaped to Nantucket between 1815 and 1818. When the Fugitive Slave Act threatened to send Cooper and his wife back to Virginia in 1822, the locals successfully drove away the slave catcher sent to retrieve him. In Skip Finley's words:

Francis Macy, a cousin of the prominent Rotch family, intervened along with “a large assemblage of persons,” including large numbers of both the black and white communities on the island, who had surrounded the house. Sylvanus Macy stepped up to suggest the power of attorney was a forgery and said, “We are not in Virginia now but in Yankee Town, and we want those colored people to man our whale ships and will not suffer them to be carried back to bondage.”