Black Sails: 10 Pirates Who Should Appear In Season 2

8. Edward England

Real or storybook? Real Who is he? A well educated Irish Catholic privateer turned pirate, England is often regarded as having been too decent and humane to his captives to make a really successful pirate. After sailing with Henry Jennings to take the Urca de Lima treasure he served as quartermaster for Charles Vane before commanding his own ship and successfully plundering around the African coast and the Indian Ocean before his generous attitude riled up his crew enough for them to maroon him on Mauritius, where he died from malaria or a similar tropical disease. Where would he fit into Black Sails? Aside from his obvious connection with the historical events and pirates of the show (Black Sails' version of Vane clearly has issues with previous quartermaster, the real life pirate Jack Rackham, so England could easily be introduced that way), England and the violent one legged man reported to be amongst his crew were some of the principle inspirations for Stevenson when writing Treasure Island. In fact the book even has a nod to this influence by having Silver note that he had sailed under both Flint and England. There is, therefore, already a canonical excuse to split up Silver and Flint at some point in the series and have the former team up with another crew. In borrowing England's personal choice of flag for its fictional pirates, Treasure Island also immortalised the skull and crossbones design as the pirate flag. The introduction of England and crew to the world of Black Sails would give the series a chance to use this too and really what pirate fan doesn't want to see Black Sails unfurling the famous flag?