from not That Complicated
https://notthatcomplicated.net/2020/06/black-sails-season-1-episode-5-recap

Black Sails S1 Ep 5
*******

Toby Stephens as James Flint. Photo courtesy of Starz.


Recap by Elizabeth Wright

This episode contains explicit language, racism, sexism, slavery, rape, and violence.

Episode V opens with the Walrus setting out in pursuit of the Andromache. Flint is still mulling over what Silver told him last episode. He pulls Billy aside for “a few minutes’ honesty.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

Billy finally stands up to him, if only in private. Men died careening the ship, and they’ll die chasing the Andromache – never knowing it was all on the strength of a lie. Billy is doubting everything, and he’s infuriated that Flint seems to doubt nothing.

But doubt, Flint tells him, is useless. “No good captain would acknowledge it.” Doubting men won’t fight, and a captain who lets his doubts consume him can’t lead them. Flint has doubts about the chase, and even about the Urca, but he has no doubts about lying to his crew.

Billy tries to ask about Mrs. Barlow, too, but Flint brushes him off. “Your captain makes a home with a nice Puritan woman who shares his love of books.”

The scene ends with the Andromache in sight, and, from Billy’s expression, nothing else resolved.

Back on the island, Rackham has coerced Vane into a career change: with Noonan dead, they can mount a takeover of the brothel. Anne Bonny terms it “a stupid fucking idea,” and Vane is still silent and distant, but Jack has a plan.

We get a quick introduction to Mrs. Mapleton, the brothel supervisor, as she deals with a distraught prostitute assaulted by one of her clients. She may look like the archetypical madam, cheerful, iron-willed, and fiercely protective of her girls, but in a few sentences we learn she’s anything but. She dismisses the woman’s tears, and her only advice is to ask for more money next time.

Money is her only priority with Jack Rackham, too. She immediately twigs to the fact that Noonan was murdered, Jack’s protests aside, but her only concern over the whole affair is getting a bigger percentage of the gross. A forty-percent ownership share established, Mrs. Mapleton trots off, and the erstwhile Ranger crew are now “the proud new owners of a brothel.”

Nothing is going well for Eleanor.

Mr. Scott hasn’t just betrayed her, he’s vanished. Her father has thrown her under the bus. And, coming into her office, she discovers that Flint’s left her a present: Silver, chained up in the corner. He’s not thrilled about the situation either, but he works for what advantage he can get. Why, he asks, does Eleanor hate him personally?

She lambastes him for stealing from Flint, but her voice breaks when she gets to Max. Eleanor refuses to blame herself for what happened – any more than with Scott – and so she’s settled on Silver as a scapegoat. It’s his fault Max is in this predicament, his fault Max walked back into hell rather than let Eleanor save her… Because if it’s Eleanor’s fault, she’ll crumble.

No good captain acknowledges doubt.

Things manage to get worse when she hears her father’s voice. He’s giving a speech one porch over, spilling everything: he’s a wanted man, there are no merchant ships left, and he’ll try to pay back what debts he can. In a parting touch, he leaves that last bit to Eleanor.

She confronts him, but if she ever had power over her father, it’s gone now. He explains what bits of his plan he thinks will convince her – making allies of the planters when the pirates are gone – but Eleanor isn’t listening. Her only question is about Scott.

“What the fuck did you have to threaten him with to get him to betray me?”

He’d threatened Scott – obliquely – with Eleanor, and who she was becoming. But unlike Mr. Scott, Guthrie only cares that what Eleanor is becoming threatens him. She’s a child, a girl, and she will fall in line.

“Fuck you,” spits Eleanor.

It’s time to make new plans of her own.

These plans are simple, at least in her own mind. The crews may be restless, but a few captains are still willing to speak with her. Captains Naft and Laurence are her worst earners – so she’ll turn them into merchants. If their men object, they can point out that they’ll make more in one peaceful voyage than they have in the last year of piracy.

Mr. Frasier holds a trading charter; his authority can get their cargo past customs houses.

Captain Hornigold – she hopes – is her big gun. But Hornigold has a request of his own. Her takedown of Vane has worried the other captains. Revoke the interdict, and she’ll have his men and support. Don’t… and she can deal with the men outside.

Eleanor orders them out. She has a decision to make.

Meanwhile, the Andromache‘s outrunning the Walrus.

Flint orders speed at all costs, raising every bit of canvas despite DeGroot’s protests that they’ll lose the masts. We’ve seen this scene before – DeGroot warning, Flint ignoring, Billy stepping forward and then backing down.

The repetition here, though, strengthens the theme rather than weakening it. Flint won’t change, and now we fear that Billy won’t either. Meanwhile, the scene is well shot and action packed, with ropes creaking, men falling from the rigging, and Flint sprinting over to take the wheel himself. This time, Flint turns out to be right: the mast holds, and their pursuit of the Andromache continues.

The crew of the Ranger are just as restless as Eleanor.

The remaining crew want a ship, not a brothel, and they’ve joined the mob outside Eleanor’s headquarters. They taunt her with Max – “we’ll send her your love” – and both she and the audience feel a visceral, hopeless urge to murder them.

Jack seizes the opportunity to have Mrs. Mapleton “treat” Max – or, rather, to give her an eighteenth century-style abortion.

Anne follows, and, seeing Max in pain, takes over. “She wasn’t using enough lotion,” she says, and repeats the process with a practiced hand. Anne doesn’t understand why Max didn’t leave when she had the chance, and Max doesn’t understand why Anne suddenly cares.

“You were the one who threw me to them in the first place.”

“I only thought they’d kill you.”

Anne’s backstory – and its marked differences to the historical figure’s – will be saved for season two, but here we see the first signs that she and Max might have more in common than we’ve known.

Vane, meanwhile, is listening to the mob, his face slumped and distant. Rackham sends Idelle up to comfort him – or at least sponge him off – and he treats her to a muttered soliloquy on power.

Eleanor’s “strong, and we’re weak. No one down there’s strong enough to change anything.”

“And you?” Idelle asks, running her fingers over a branded scar on his chest.

“Maybe it’s time I found out.”

A protesting Jack follows him to the harbor, but Vane’s determined. He sails a one man skiff out into the gloom, chasing yet another ghost.

Even as the Walrus gains on the Andromache, Bryson is unconcerned. He orders his men to protect the cargo, and only then sees about manning the guns.

Flint hashes out a plan to board the ship, and for once, it goes off without a hitch.

They let the Andromache rake them with her broadsides, losing man after man to the guns, and keep charging forwards rather than mount a broadside of their own. To turn the Andromache so that they can board side-to-side, Flint employs a sniper (and the audience’s suspension of disbelief) to kill two successive helmsmen until the Andromache loses the wind and becomes a sitting duck. That done, the boarding crews come roaring across, overwhelming the Andromache’s resistance.

This is interspersed with Dufresne, the ship’s bookkeeper, in his first trip “over the side.” He’s petrified, even after Billy takes Flint’s advice and lies to him that no Walrus man has ever died their first time over. We see the chaos of the battle from his point of view… right up until he rips a man’s throat out with his teeth.

But as the battle wanes, Flint realizes Bryson had reason for being unconcerned. He’s holed up in a near-impenetrable strong room belowdecks…

And he has one more ace up his sleeve.

Bryson’s safe room is just past the holding area for his cargo – a few dozen slaves in chains, including, we see for the first time, Mr. Scott. He betrayed Mr. Guthrie, Bryson informs him, and “we men of duty must often put our feelings aside.” He punctuates this by shooting a woman in the head, and then threatening a second, until one of the slaves agrees to run a message up to Flint.

It’s a stark reminder of how fragile Scott’s position really was, how fragile Nassau is. The outside world has returned, and Scott is no longer a businessman or an authority – he’s property to be sold.

That’s reinforced above decks, where one of Flint’s men translates the slave’s message – they share the same language, and likely some of the same story.

His message: the Scarborough is coming.

This is confirmed as Billy and Dufresne search the ship’s log. Billy, though, finds something else: a letter from Miranda Barlow. He pockets it, but there’s no time to read.

The Scarborough’s sails are in sight.

Returning to Nassau, we see Eleanor in a conundrum – and Silver’s silver tongue at its best. He latches on quickly to Eleanor’s weak point – her refusal to blame herself for what’s happened to Max. Guilt, he tells her, goes away, but “losing your life’s work… that doesn’t.”

We’ve yet to see Silver guilty about anything, but this conversation plays very differently in light of the choices he will eventually make, the life’s work he will eventually destroy, the guilt that follows him through the pages of Treasure Island.

Here and now, though, he’s a convincing man.

We don’t see Eleanor’s answer… but he knows, and she knows, that only one answer will let her keep Nassau.

And a good captain can’t acknowledge doubt.