pirate

When Xavier “X” Atencio was plucked by Walt Disney in 1965 to be one of his early theme park designers, he was slotted on a number of projects that placed him out of his comfort zone.

Atencio, for instance, never would have envisioned himself a songwriter.

One of Atencio’s first major projects with Walt Disney Imagineering — WED Enterprises (for Walter Elias Disney), as it was known at the time — was Pirates of the Caribbean. In the mid-’60s when Atencio joined the Pirates team, the attraction was well underway, with the likes of fellow animators-turned-theme park designers Marc Davis and Claude Coats crafting many of its exaggerated characters and enveloping environments. Atencio’s job? Make it all make sense by giving it a cohesive story. While Atencio had once dreamed of being a journalist, his work as an animator had led him astray of a writer’s path.

Atencio would not only figure it out but end up as the draftman of one of Disneyland’s most recognizable songs, “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me).” In the process, he was key in creating the template for the modern theme park dark ride, a term often applied to slow-moving indoor attractions. Such career twists and turns are detailed in a new book about Atencio, who died in 2017. “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of an Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” (Disney Editions), written by three of his family members, follows Atencio’s unexpected trajectory, starting from his roots in animation (his resume includes “Fantasia,” the Oscar-winning short “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom” and even stop-motion work in “Mary Poppins”).

For Pirates of the Caribbean, Atencio is said to have received little direction from Disney, only that the park’s patriarch was unhappy with previous stabs at a narration and dialogue, finding them leaning a bit stodgy. So he knew, essentially, what not to do. Atencio, according to the book, immersed himself in films like Disney’s own “Treasure Island” and pop-cultural interpretations of pirates, striving for something that felt borderline caricature rather than ripped from the history books.

Xavier “X” Atencio got his start in animation. Here, he is seen drawing dinosaurs for a sequence in “Fantasia.”

(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)

Indeed, Atencio’s words — some of those quoted in the book, such as “Avast there! Ye come seeking adventure and salty old pirates, aye?” — have become shorthand for how to speak like a pirate. The first scene written for the attraction was the mid-point auction sequence, a section of the ride that was changed in 2017 due to its outdated cultural implications. In the original, a proud redheaded pirate is the lead prisoner in a bridal auction, but today the “wench” has graduated to pirate status of her own and is helping to auction off stolen goods.

At first, Atencio thought he had over-written the scene, noticing that dialogue overlapped with one another. In a now-famous theme park moment, and one retold in the book, Atencio apologized to Disney, who shrugged off Atencio’s insecurity.

“Hey, X, when you go to a cocktail party, you pick up a little conversation here, another conversation there,” Disney told the animator. “Each time people will go through, they’ll find something new.”

This was the green light that Atencio, Davis and Coats needed to continue developing their attraction as one that would be a tableau of scenes rather than a strict plot.

Tying it all together, Atencio thought, should be a song. Not a songwriter himself, of course, Atencio sketched out a few lyrics and a simple melody. As the authors write, he turned to the thesaurus and made lists of traditional “pirating” words. He presented it to Disney and, to Atencio’s surprise, the company founder promptly gave him the sign off.

“Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me),” Atencio would relay, was a challenge as the ride doesn’t have a typical beginning and ending, meaning the tune needed to work with whatever pirate vignette we were sailing by. Ultimately, the song, with music by George Bruns, underlines the ride’s humorous feel, allowing the looting, the pillaging and the chasing of women, another scene that has been altered over the years, to be delivered with a playful bent.

The song “altered the trajectory” of Atencio’s career. While Atencio was not considered a musical person — “No, not at all,” says his daughter Tori Atencio McCullough, one of the book’s co-authors — the biography reveals how music became a signature aspect of his work. The short “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom,” for instance, is a humorous tale about the discovery of music. And elsewhere in Atencio’s career he worked on the band-focused opening animations for “Mickey Mouse Club.”

“That one has a pretty cool kind of modern instrument medley in the middle,” Kelsey McCullough, Atencio’s granddaughter and another one of the book’s authors, says of “Mickey Mouse Club.” “It was interesting, because when we lined everything up, it was like, ‘Of course he felt like the ride needed a song.’ Everything he had been doing up to that point had a song in it. Once we looked it at from that perspective, it was sort of unsurprising to us. He was doing a lot around music.”

Xavier “X” Atencio contributed concepts to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, including its famous one-eyed cat.

(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)

Atencio would go on to write lyrics for the Country Bear Jamboree and the Haunted Mansion. While the Haunted Mansion vacillates between spooky and lighthearted imagery, it’s Atencio’s “Grim Grinning Ghosts” that telegraphs the ride’s tone and makes it clear it’s a celebratory attraction, one in which many of those in the afterlife prefer to live it up rather than haunt.

Despite his newfound music career, Atencio never gave up drawing and contributing concepts to Disney theme park attractions. Two of my favorites are captured in the book — his abstract flights through molecular lights for the defunct Adventure Thru Inner Space and his one-eyed black cat for the Haunted Mansion. The latter has become a fabled Mansion character over the years. Atencio’s fiendish feline would have followed guests throughout the ride, a creature said to despise living humans and with predatory, possessive instincts.

In Atencio’s concept art, the cat featured elongated, vampire-like fangs and a piercing red eye. In a nod to Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” it had just one eyeball, which sat in its socket with all the subtlety of a fire alarm. Discarded eventually — a raven essentially fills a similar role — the cat today has been resurrected for the Mansion, most notably in a revised attic scene where the kitty is spotted near a mournful bride.

Xavier “X” Atencio retired from Disney in 1984 after four-plus decades with the company. He drew his own retirement announcement.

(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)

Co-author Bobbie Lucas, a relative of Atencio’s colloquially referred to by the family as his “grandchild-in-law,” was asked what ties all of Atencio’s work together.

“No matter the different style or no matter the era, there’s such a sense of life and humanity,” Lucas says. “There’s a sense of play.”

Play is a fitting way to describe Atencio’s contributions to two of Disneyland’s most beloved attractions, where pirates and ghosts are captured at their most frivolous and jovial.

“I like that,” Lucas adds. “I like someone who will put their heart on their sleeve and show you that in their art.”

MAYA Jama and Ruben Dias looked more loved-up than ever as they transformed into pirates for Halloween. 

Presenter Maya, 31, took to Instagram to share snaps from her spooky night out with boyfriend Ruben, 28. 

The stunning Love Island host put on a busy display in a corset-style top and flowing skirt, finishing the look with a hat. 

Meanwhile Manchester City defender Ruben channelled Pirates of the Caribbean’s Jack Sparrow in his own get up. 

Maya captioned her upload: “First Manchester Halloween.” 

Fans rushed to comment on the photos, with one writing: “You guys smashed it!” 

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Another said: “Best looking couple ever.” 

And a third added: “You look so happy together.”

Maya and Ruben confirmed their romance in April this year and it’s been reported the Love Island host is planning a full-time move to Manchester to support him. 

A source said previously: “Maya loves the down-to-earth nature of Manchester, as well as the glamour of the football and WAG scene.

“Bristol and London will always be special to her but she is loving spending more time in Manchester with Ruben. The city has become a celebrity hub.”

Maya recently cleared up speculation she’s set to quit Love Island, reassuring fans she’s going nowhere right now. 

In a statement posted on social media, she said: “I did tell you if you were going to hear any news about it, it would come from me and me only.

“I will be hosting next year, I’ll be back for All Stars in January and then summer series in June and July. We go again, mother lovers.”

Pirating, as evidenced by centuries of stories and one of the greatest theme park rides, has long fascinated. Seafaring and sword fighting imply adventure. Dice games? Bluffing and strategy. And if you’re really lucky, maybe you’ll find a mermaid.

Audience members seen during a production of “Pirates Wanted,” an interactive production from Last Call Theatre.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones/The Los Angeles Times)

Last Call Theatre, a local interactive-focused performance group, has found a way to give us a taste of buccaneering — without the pesky consequences of being captured by the Royal Navy or succumbing to a rum-induced liver disease.

For one more weekend in Long Beach, theatergoers can live out a mini marauding fantasy on an actual ship at “Pirates Wanted,” a limited-run revival of the troupe’s 2024 show. It’s theater, but it’s also a choose-your-own-adventure-style game, one with branching narratives, multiple endings and even life lessons.

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The show is set on board the American Pride tall ship docked at Long Beach’s Pine Avenue Pier, a 130-foot schooner that today is primarily used as an education-focused vessel. Stand still and feel the lean and long boat gently rock on the waves. But you’ll rarely be stationary on the wood-heavy craft. With a cast of 14 and an audience capacity of 55, “Pirates Wanted” explores the full top deck of the ship, which is accessible via a small portable stairway.

The setup: As audience members, we are to be trained as pirates in 17th century England, with much of the cast performing in exaggerated accents. The drama: Our captain’s previous ship was marooned under suspicious circumstances. To complicate matters, a long-lost sibling, also a pirate with his own troubling history, is here to judge the crew’s seaworthiness. The show begins with a speech from Capt. Souvanna (Bonnie-Lynn Montaño), who sternly demands a vocal “aye” from the audience as the ground rules are laid out. Follow them, Souvanna warns, or risk being thrown into the harbor.

Captain Souvanna (Bonnie-Lynn Montaño) and Captain Draken (Shelby Ryan Lee) share a moment during immersive theater production “Pirates Wanted.”

In moments, we are free to wander and link up with various crew members for our pirating lessons. The so-called “treasures of the seas” aren’t going to be pillaged without our help, and I soon find myself improvising sea shanties and engaging in a game of liar’s dice. I stumble over relearning how to construct a knot — important, I am told, in case I’m tossed overboard and need to quickly lasso myself to a raft — but have better luck mimicking a figure 8 with my sword. We have tasks to complete — or games to play, rather — which are ultimately an excuse for conversation.

Ask a roaming bard about the previous ship’s fate and a host of stories start to unravel and reveal themselves — love affairs, hidden secrets, lost maps and the requisite discontentment among the ship’s keep. What would a pirate narrative be without talk, for instance, of mutiny?

Oats Weetle (Mads Durbin) climbs a mast during a dramatic scene in “Pirates Wanted.”

“Pirates Wanted” is heavily active, and one won’t discover all of the show’s narrative paths. Wander, for instance, to a compartment at the ship’s bow, and you may hear conspiratorial whispers. Hang in the aft, and there might be talk of a siren on board. I saw others with treasure maps, and only caught murmurs of the romantic soap operas unfolding among the crew. Love letters were lost and recovered, and at one point I was pulled aside, a pirate whispering to me to ask if there was an illicit affair on board between a member of the crew and the British Navy.

Audience members take in “Pirates Wanted.”

Like all of Last Call’s shows, there are multiple ways to watch — or play. One can opt to be a relatively passive observer trying to overhear conversations and uncover the various storylines. But it’s advised to lean in, to hop from character to character armed with questions and the willingness to go on assigned quests. Here, the latter rely heavily on gossip. Early on I was tasked, for instance, with asking the various pirates about their feelings over losing their last ship, only I was told not to use the word “feel” in my line of questioning (after all, one must trick a pirate into vulnerability).

Throughout, “Pirates Wanted” explores how to navigate complicated family drama and romantic relationships when value systems — you know, looting and pillaging versus not — don’t align. There are metaphors if you go looking for them, specifically on having to live much of one’s life in the closet, but “Pirates Wanted” places a heavy emphasis on silliness too.

Last Call over the last three years has established itself as one of the more prolific companies on the city’s immersive theater scene, regularly hosting two or three shows per year. The troupe has already announced a winter time traveling production, “The Butterfly Effect,” set to debut Nov. 8 at Stella Coffee near Beverly Hills. “Pirates Wanted” last year became one of Last Call’s best reviewed productions.

Throughout “Pirates Wanted” audience members will be tasked with quests, sometimes seeking hidden items.

“It definitely was our most critically and financially successful show we put on,” says Ashley Busenlener, Last Call’s executive director. “Who doesn’t like pirates on an actual ship?”

“Pirates Wanted” leans campy, a vision of the lifestyle more informed by Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean than any historical fiction. It also tackles subject matter not often seen in pirate tales, such as feelings of being misunderstood and the struggle to be one’s true self.

“One of the things that I often notice about pirate media is a lot of the time you see pirates and the majority of time they are white men,” Busenlener says. “That’s not who I think I pirates are. We were very intentional … in creating a cast that we felt represented what piracy should be.”

In turn, many of the actors are female, queer and hail from diverse backgrounds. The goal, says Busenlener, was to show that anyone can be a pirate.

“Pirates are the people who were outside of society,” Busenlener says. “They were breaking rules and laws and taking power into their own hands. That’s something we wanted to reflect.”

There are multiple story tracks in one “Pirates Wanted.” In one, captain Souvanna (Bonnie-Lynn Montaño) may face a mutiny.

And it’s represented in one of the show’s most affecting narrative branches, one in which a half-mermaid spent their life presenting only as human out of fear. It’s intimate drama laced with mysticism, an adult theme ultimately handled with a hint of levity for this family-friendly show.

It also gets to the heart of Last Call’s ambitious with “Pirates Wanted.” Come for the swashbuckling — and the chance to learn some sword-fighting moves — but stay for the emotional adventure. Just don’t be surprised if you leave the pier suddenly talking in a fake British accent.

Tall ship the American Pride in Long Beach, home for one more weekend to immersive theater show “Pirates Wanted.”

Medan, Indonesia – Indonesia is celebrating 80 years of independence from Dutch colonial rule, but not everyone is in a celebratory mood, and an unusual protest movement has rallied around a cartoon pirate flag.

The flag, which features a skull and crossbones wearing a straw hat, has been spotted adorning homes, cars, trucks, motorcycles and boats across Indonesia.

Popularised by the hit Japanese anime One Piece, the flag has even been flown beneath the Indonesian flag – known as the merah-putih (red and white) – which is widely raised throughout the month of August in the lead-up to Independence Day on Sunday.

In the anime series, which was adapted by Netflix in 2023, the hatted skull and crossbones flag is used by adventurer Monkey D Luffy – who one day hopes to become a pirate king – and is seen as a sign of hope, freedom and a pushback against authoritarianism.

In Indonesia, the flag has been raised as a sign of protest amid increasing public frustration with the government.

“Rising prices, difficulties in getting a job and the incompetencies of the government have prompted the people to use satire and sarcasm,” Radityo Dharmaputra, a lecturer in international relations at Airlangga University in Surabaya, told Al Jazeera.

Raising the pirate flag is a sign of “growing dissatisfaction in society, even with all the so-called progress that the government has claimed”, Dharmaputra said.

Prabowo Subianto was sworn in as the new president of Indonesia in October, promising fast economic growth and social change in this country of almost 286 million people.

But Southeast Asia’s largest economy and most populous democracy is faltering.

‘A symbol of my disappointment and resistance’

Indonesia has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Southeast Asia, with an estimated 16 percent of the 44 million Indonesians aged 15-24 unemployed, while foreign investors are pulling capital out of the country and the government is cutting the budget.

In a survey published by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore in January, about 58 percent of young Indonesians said they were optimistic about the government’s economic plans, compared with an average of 75 percent across five other countries in the region – Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Before the flag protest, in February, the “Indonesia Gelap” or “Dark Indonesia” movement gained momentum, with citizens using the #IndonesiaGelap hashtag on social media to vent their frustrations about the future of the country following widespread budget cuts and proposed changes in legislation allowing the military to have a greater role in the government.

The online protest was followed by student demonstrations, which erupted across a number of cities.

President Prabowo accused the Dark Indonesia movement of being backed by “corruptors” bent on creating pessimism in the country.

“This is fabricated, paid for, by whom?” Prabowo said, according to Indonesian news outlet Tempo.

“By those who want Indonesia to always be chaotic, Indonesia to always be poor. Yes, those corruptors are the ones financing the demonstrations. Indonesia is dark, Indonesia is dark. Sorry, Indonesia is bright, Indonesia’s future is bright,” the president said.

Adi*, a truck driver in the city of Malang in East Java, told Al Jazeera that he has been flying the anime pirate flag on the side of his truck for the past three weeks.

“Many, many people have been flying it in East Java. To me, it is a symbol of my disappointment and resistance against the government,” he said.

Adi said that he had long been frustrated, but that the flag had provided him with a new way of displaying this frustration.

Members of his family had died, Adi said, when police fired tear gas into the Kanjuruhan Stadium in East Java’s Malang city on October 1, 2022, following what police claimed was a pitch invasion by fans at the end of a football match.

This tear gas led to panic and a crowd crush at locked exit gates that killed 135 people.

Three police officers and two match officials were prosecuted for their roles in the tragedy, one of the worst in international footballing history.

“I am disappointed by the lack of justice for the victims of Kanjuruhan. Until now, we have received none of the restitution we were promised. I am also disappointed by other problems in Indonesia, including rising prices,” he said.

‘An attempt to divide unity’

The One Piece pirate flag has caught the attention of the government, with Budi Gunawan, the coordinating minister for political and security affairs, warning that authorities would take “firm action” if the flag was flown on Sunday’s Independence Day.

“There will be criminal consequences for actions that violate the honour of the red and white flag,” he said.

Indonesia’s Deputy House Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad branded the hoisting of the pirate flag an attempt to deliberately sow dissent.

“We have detected and received input from security agencies that there is indeed an attempt to divide unity. My appeal to all the nation’s children is to unite and fight against such things,” he said.

Yohanes Sulaiman, a lecturer in international relations at Jenderal Achmad Yani University, told Al Jazeera that the government’s warnings were likely an attempt to clamp down on the show of symbolic dissent.

“I suspect they didn’t know how Prabowo would react and thus thought it better to show their loyalty and take the extreme position than be sorry later,” Sulaiman said.

The government threats had “backfired spectacularly”, he said, adding that it was left looking like a “laughing stock”.

“Saying that the flag has the potential of breaking apart the nation is too much. It is hyperbolic and nobody takes it seriously,” he said.

Sulaiman said the origins of the flag’s use in Indonesia could be traced back to truck drivers.

“Truckers were the ones first flying it to protest a recent regulation that forbade overweight trucks from hitting the road. If the government had just ignored it, the flag would have ended up on the back of trucks and nobody would have taken it seriously,” Sulaiman said.

“But, they had to make it about a national threat, a threat to national unity and disrespect of the national flag,” he said.

He added that the increased visibility of the pirate flag comes at a sensitive time in Indonesia – ahead of Independence Day – which is traditionally a moment for the government and the public to celebrate.

Ian Wilson, a lecturer in politics and security studies at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, said the flag furore demonstrated “sensitivity around perceptions of popularity” in the current government.

The flag as a symbol of protest appeared to be a more fragmented movement than recent and historical protests in Indonesia, Wilson said, which have traditionally been largely driven by students.

“Students are a more singular group, but this is a more dispersed phenomenon across different groups and parts of the country, which is indicative of widespread dissatisfaction. It touches a nerve due to the diffused representation,” he said.

“We are seeing this phenomenon in places like villages and by regular people in semi-rural areas, which are not conventional sites of dissent in Indonesia,” he added.

‘An expression of creativity’

According to reports by local Indonesian media, anime pirate flags have been seized in raids by authorities in East Java, while citizens found displaying them have been questioned in the Riau Islands.

So far, no one has been criminally charged, as flying the pirate flag is not technically illegal.

Usman Hamid, Amnesty International Indonesia’s executive director, said the raids were “a flagrant violation of the right to freedom of expression”.

“Raising an anime flag is not ‘treason’ or ‘propaganda to disunite the country’, as suggested by government officials,” Hamid said in a statement.

“Authorities, including lawmakers, must stop harassing people by threatening them with jail terms for ‘disrespecting the national flag’ and ‘treason’ if they raise One Piece flags,” he added.

Truck driver Adi told Al Jazeera that he had seen no indications that the government’s threats had had any impact on those flying the flag and that they could still be seen prominently on display across East Java – both on trucks and buildings.

“Why would I be scared of any sanctions?” Adi asked.

The president’s office has denied any involvement in the police confiscating flags or questioning civilians.

For his part, Prabowo – a retired army general who oversaw crackdowns on the 1998 student protests that precipitated the fall of the country’s longtime dictator President Soeharto – said that the flag was “an expression of creativity”.

Murdoch University’s Wilson said that the government had perhaps been rattled by the Dark Indonesia protests, which came early on in Prabowo’s presidency.

“No one wants that at the start [of a presidency], as they are trying to generate optimism,” Wilson said.

“But now, further down the track, people have some serious issues with government performance,” he said.

*Adi is a pseudonym as the interviewee did not want his name revealed for personal safety reasons when criticising the government.

Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan’s “Washington Black,” a prizewinning story of race, romance, friendship and identity set in the early 19th century, has been translated by Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and Kimberly Ann Harrison into a Hulu miniseries. Unsurprisingly, it plays more like a miniseries than a novel, amplifying the action, the drama and the romance; beefing up lesser characters; drawing lines under, after all, valid points about prejudice, inequality and injustice; and dressing it up with Hollywood musical cues. Taking the show as a sometimes fantastic historical adventure, those aren’t bad things, but, unlike the book, subtlety is not the series’ strong suit.

Written in the first person, the novel proceeds chronologically, while the series, which follows other, sometimes added characters into interpolated storylines, switches between 1830 — when our hero, George Washington Black, called Wash, is 11 years old and enslaved on a Barbados sugar plantation — and 1837, when he lives as a free young man in Halifax, Nova Scotia, drawing beautiful pictures and designing a before-its-time airship. (For the benefit of American viewers wondering why we’re in Halifax, opening narration helpfully identifies it as the last stop on the Underground Railroad.)

The split timeline does make Entertainment Sense. We don’t have to wait around for young Wash (Eddie Karanja) to grow up into older Wash (Ernest Kingsley Jr.), and we are immediately introduced to Tanna Goff (Iola Evans), arriving from London with her father (Rupert Graves) for a “fresh start.” (There was a scandal back in Britain.) Unbeknownst to Tanna, her father plans to marry her off to a young Canadian bigwig (Edward Bluemel), for what he believes is her own security. This is new, if very familiar, material.

Wash and Tanna meet-cute at the docks where he works, when based on her skin, he mistakes her for a servant — she’s been passing for white, but he (and we) recognize her as a person of color. (Melanesian, to be exact.) In the coming days, he’ll contrive to meet her here and there, until they get friendly, and friendlier. Like Wash, she’ll be a voice for living free, “to be myself, to live in my own skin.” (“We’re both dreamers,” she muses. “Can’t we dream up a different world?”) Coincidentally, and not unfortunately, her papa is a marine biologist, the author of a book Wash, who has a keen interest in the subject, knows well. Wash’s gift for capturing the essence of living things on paper may prove useful to him.

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1. Eddie Karanja plays young Wash in the series. (James Van Evers / Disney) 2. Sterling K. Brown, an executive producer, also stars. (Chris Reardon / Disney)

Meanwhile, if that’s the word, back in 1830, the future looks dim for young Wash under the harsh rule of plantation owner Erasmus Wilde (Julian Rhind-Tutt), a situation eased only by his beloved caring protector Big Kit (Shaunette Renée Wilson). (Ironically, the end of slavery throughout the British Empire was just around the corner.) One day, Erasmus’ brother Christopher (Tom Ellis), called Titch, arrives driving a giant steam-powered tractor for no practical reason other than to announce him as a somewhat eccentric inventor, like Caractacus Pott; but it provides a point of connection between Titch and Wash, who becomes his assistant. Another character who had to leave London, Titch plans to use an island hilltop to launch his “cloud cutter,” a flying machine that won’t exist in the real world for many years but which looks cool. (Steampunk is the applicable term.)

When an incident on the island threatens to paint Wash, wrongly, as a murderer, Titch takes him up, up and away in his beautiful balloon. It’s in the supercharged spirit of this adaptation that when they crash into a sailing ship, it should be full of pirates, and not merely pirates, but pirates who have stolen from the British a new sort of craft powered by a dynamo that looks heavy enough to sink it. This passage is crafted to show us a self-determined society, multiethnic and multigendered. When the pirates mutiny (bloodlessly), the new captain is a woman. They like Wash more than Titch, whom they throw in the brig, but they are nice, relatively speaking.

Titch is an avowed abolitionist who won’t use the sugar the plantation produces, and though we are called upon to note small hypocrisies or to question his motivations — is he trying to assuage his 19th century white liberal guilt even as he uses Wash to his own ends? — I will declare him sincere, if also a man of his time. The showrunners put him into a (very) brief debate with fierce figure from history Nat Turner (Jamie Hector), opposing Turner’s militarism against Titch’s less persuasive “reason, logic and the appeal to man’s better nature,” an argument suspended when Turner holds a knife to his throat. (Wash intercedes on his behalf; he is more than once his mentor’s protector.) It also adds a shot of American history into this Canadian story.

Sterling K. Brown, an executive producer, plays Medwin, a character much expanded from the novel, the unofficial mayor of the Black community who will swashbuckle in when a day needs to be saved. (There are bounty hunters from down south, looking for Wash; Billy Boyd, former Hobbit, is wonderfully creepy as Willard.) As to Wash, it’s not enough that he’s a gifted artist and scientist; the show introduces him as “a boy brave enough to change the world.”

The novel trots the globe, from Barbados to Virginia to Nova Scotia to the Arctic to London to Morocco, and besides the hot-air balloon, includes the invention of the public aquarium. Though only four episodes of the series were available to review, photos indicate that lands of snow and sand are indeed on the itinerary (not sure about the aquarium), and as a fan of 19th century globe-trotting adventures, I do remain eager to see what the series makes of them. Kingsley and Evans, in their blossoming love story and otherwise, are good company throughout.

Edugyan ends her book on a suspended chord, a note of mystery I don’t imagine will be definitive enough for the filmmakers. But we shall see.