Thank you to the lovely Suzanne Karr Schmidt for this fantastic post about Our Flag Means Death.
Suzanne Karr Schmidt is a curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Newberry Library in Chicago, the third director of the Movable Book Society, a fine fabric fancier (currently working on a Newberry exhibition for December 2026 about pre-1800 prints on fabric) and, obviously, a fan of the pirates. You can find her OFMD Season One ode to Stede Bonnet’s outfits as book bindings here!
Bluesky: @drkarrschmidt; Instagram: @ladydisdaine.
What happens when the special interests of rare books and swashbuckling fandoms collide? We get a shipboard library prone to escape during storms in the delightfully anachronistic, unapologetically sweet, and very gay pirate romance, Our Flag Means Death! (Spoilers ahoy.)
screenshot from Our Flag Means Death
Eighteenth-century accounts allege that the historical Blackbeard (Edward Teach) and Gentleman Pirate (Stede Bonnet) were indeed travel companions for a time, and in a business partnership or consortship, if not a more intimate one. Authors explicitly reference the Gentleman Pirate’s amateur maritime skills (perhaps born of excessive reading, rather than experience?).1 Thus was born showrunner David Jenkins’s romantic premise, including the implication that Stede’s bookishness was one of many ways Blackbeard found Bonnet fascinating.
Throughout its first two seasons, (which appeared on Max in 2022 and 2023), the beauty of books and the power of storytelling remained a major visual and narrative theme. For instance, reading Pinocchio to the crew at bedtime helped Rhys Darby’s Gentleman Pirate avert mutiny (regardless of whether it had yet been written in 1717).
Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet
Literary looting protocols also become one of the finer points of how Taika Waititi’s Blackbeard educated his enthusiastic amateur pirate friend, while published images of Blackbeard in books or on (fictional) Wanted posters spread the legend, but rarely matched the man himself. While the presence of books, prints, and maps onboard Bonnet’s Revenge and other ships was mostly humorous, the destruction of Stede’s precious, precarious library heightened one of the most devastating moments in the first season.
Blackbeard in Charles Johnson’s Most Famous Highwaymen, Pyrates, Etc. London: J. Janeway, 1734. Newberry Library (Case folio I 201 .218)
Beyond active props, the set dressing remained on point throughout OFMD, so much so that this curator of rare books (among other viewers) desperately wanted to identify the mysterious engraving by Stede Bonnet’s bed on the Revenge. The legend letters peppered through the landscape and ships suggested it was a book illustration with a separate explanation, and the line quality that it was originally an engraving.
But nothing at Chicago’s Newberry Library fit, despite the deep strengths of our travel literature and Americana, though I was convinced I’d be able to track it down. Couldn’t it be part of de Bry’s America? Still no. Eventually, I set it aside as a fool’s errand… Then a surprisingly familiar image appeared in a book dealer catalogue when I was least expecting it!
The mystery work turned out to be from a 1617 Dutch book with the first Western reference to Buenos Aires, (founded only twenty years prior). It is also likely the first printed account of Dutch travel to South America. And, of course, it’s exactly the same printed coastal image as the one on the Revenge…
No wonder I couldn’t find it; the book was so rare that we didn’t have it! All the more impressive that the OFMD set dressers did. There is however, a digital copy of a copy at the University of Amsterdam. This is probably the source of the bed nook print, which may have been enlarged from the c. 6 ¾ x 9 inch original for framing.
Title page of the 1617 volume.
Ships Aflame
So, what does the engraving actually show, now that it has been identified? Why IS that ship (E) on fire? Is it fighting the city (B)? The legend on a nearby page identifies it as the Silver World, a Dutch vessel in the party hoping to trade in the region. What region, might you ask? …
The print shows the Bay of All Saints (Todos Los Santos), listed as (B), in Bahia, Brazil. The Dutch ship manned by the Dutch author, Hendrik Ottsen, stopped there on the way back from Buenos Aires, but soon the crew found themselves on fire and imprisoned! Luckily, other Dutch ships later bailed them out, and he lived to tell the tale.
But what about Buenos Aires?
The engraving in Stede’s bed nook doesn’t show it, but it does appear, just at the lower edge of a different map in the book, as “Bonnes Eyres”! From his choice of a nautical decorating scheme over a diagrammatic one, it did not seem like visiting Brazil was on Stede’s bucket list… Interestingly though, he technically had something else Brazilian onboard already, in the mast “made of the finest cherry wood from Brazil,” which, being “rather strong, actually,” saves his life during a duel!
But what, if anything, does any of this mean? Perish the thought that eagle-eyed viewers might over-interpret the placement of artwork in a television show that plays fast and loose with history (especially when a still period-appropriate Artemisia Gentileschi self-portrait appears at a climactic point in Season Two). The 1617 Dutch travel print absolutely could have been on the historical Bonnet’s wall, even if that would have meant removing it from the book in his library. Perhaps he bought two copies?
Two images with Stede and Ed appearing separately, but looking towards each other. On the left, First Mate Buttons suddenly wakes Stede up in his bed nook under the framed 1617 engraving of the Silver World Dutch ship, inhospitably set on fire in the Todos Los Santos Bay in Brazil!
On the right, Ed waits for an opening to send Stede to doggy heaven during the F**kery in episode 5. The print with the flaming Dutch ship is still visible on the right.
If there is any deeper meaning, it’s likely an attempt to stir up additional drama. The engraving featured the exciting adventures of the (violently flaming) Dutch ships, and despite its intimate placement in Stede Bonnet’s chambers, it showed up clearly early in the “The Art of F**kery” episode when Blackbeard was wrestling with the idea of potentially killing his friend to steal his identity. Near the episode’s end, Stede, still very much alive, unleashes a theatrical “Kraken” attack on a crew of Dutchmen he has lured onto the Revenge. And very, very near the end of the first season, the framed print is seen again, askew, above a distraught Ed Teach. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps you’ll have to give Our Flag another rewatch to make up your own mind.
References
- One of the earliest texts even situated the overlapping Blackbeard and Bonnet chapters together, as third and fourth, respectively. Captain Charles Johnson (Daniel Defoe?), A general history of the pyrates,: from their first rise and settlement in the Island of Providence to the present time. With the remarkable actions and adventures of the two female pyrates Mary Read and Anne Bonny; contain’d in the following chapters,… To which is added a short abstract of the statute and civil law in relation to pyracy. London: T. Warner, 1724 (second, enlarged edition adding Anne Bonny and Mary Read).
Read the whole book here: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.69015000005823
