I’d like to share a cool historical fact with you that’s also a good reminder you should ALWAYS research the historical ‘facts’ you already ‘know’.

(I put this on my Instagram stories yesterday but I think it deserves a Twitter thread too)

So @_DavidStevens started playing Assassin’s Creed Black Sails (aka the one with pirates in) yesterday. There’s a cut scene in it that implies that Black people wouldn’t have been able to captain a pirate ship because of racism. This seemed ... off! So I looked it up.

And it turns out that ... well, yep, it’s wrong. Not only were Black men captains (more on this in a moment) but the whole GAME is visually wrong, because there’s only one Black main character in it, and Black people should have made up MORE THAN A THIRD of all the pirates.

On to the Black captains! There’s a guy called Black Caesar who sounds awesome - but also there don’t seem to be actual historical records for him? So he might be made up. Not made up though is the pirate Laurens de Graf.

And the VERY interesting thing about Laurens de Graf is that he was Black, but historians have traditionally written about him as white BECAUSE THEY WERE SCARED HE WAS TOO INSPIRATIONAL.

This is a very good reminder that history is written by the victors and you should never trust what you just ‘know’ without looking further! And also that you need you make at least one third of your pirates in any historical pirate story Black otherwise you’re writing fantasy.

Please note that I am not a pirate historian! I just like research! I also don’t know details of Laurens de Graf’s life. But I have read enough about the ways that on-board society was loyalty/rank based rather than race-based to feel pretty confident saying this on Twitter.

Below are the articles that I read for this:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jul-02-me-46893-story.html%3f_amp=true

https://www.eiu.edu/historia/Yangas2014.pdf

Tldr; WHITHER THE BLACK PIRATE STORIES? Publishers/game studios/TV studios, commission your interested Black writers forthwith!