Hooks and peg legs: ASU professor examines myths about pirates, disabilities

Manushag N. “Nush” Powell, the new chair of Arizona State University’s Department of English, admits she has a problem.

When she starts talking about pirates and pirate literature, she can’t stop. Words rapidly tumble out of her mouth, her passion for the subjects quickly evident.

It’s been that way for Powell since she was a graduate student at UCLA and decided to do a presentation on John Gay’s opera “Polly.” It tells the story of Polly Peachum, who falls in love with Macheath, a character who is transported to the West Indies and becomes a pirate, disguised as a Black man under the pseudonym of “Morano.”

“I really didn’t know anything about it, but I started reading up on piracy and ended up way down this rabbit hole,” said Powell, who took over as the English department’s chair on July 1. “I wrote my thesis on something else, but I kept kind of coming back to it more and more over the years.

“I taught some courses on piracy, and then realized I had enough material for a book ("British Pirates in Print and Performance") without ever having intended to do that. Now, I’m fully committed.”

Powell’s latest writing is an article about pirates and disability titled, "Thieving Hooks, and the Stories We Tell about Pirates,” published in the scholarly journal Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe and his Contemporaries.

ASU News talked to Powell about the article and other pirate myths, and her plans for the English department.

Note: Answers may have been edited lightly for clarity and/or brevity.

Question: So, the obvious first question. Why are you fascinated with pirates?

Answer: Initially what fascinated me was the idea of sort of the swashbuckling lifestyle and defiance of all authority. At some point in his life, every man has the impulse to spit on his hands, plant the black flag and start slitting throats, right? There’s sort of that romantic appeal. As I learned more, what I became fascinated with was the gap between what we actually know about piracy, which is a global phenomenon that stretches all the way back in known history and continues today. 

There are big gaps between the legend and the reality. So, what I’m interested in is how you get from “A” to “B” because, unlike dragons, which I also teach about, pirates aren’t invented. They’re totally real. And you can see a legend being built. And as a genre theorist, that’s fascinating to me.

Q: Your latest article is on pirates and disabilities? Why that subject?

A: I have a course called the “Real History of Pirates” for Wondrium (a Great Courses brand that produces educational content), and my producer was looking for images to pair with lectures. I had talked about the idea of pirates with hook prosthetics and leg prosthetics, and he said, “Great, where’s an image that we can show of a real pirate with a hook?” And I was like, “There’s no such thing. No one has ever found one.” And then I was like, “Now that I say that out loud, it sounds fake.”

Q: So, what you thought was true wasn’t?

A: Well, it’s certainly true that pirates were missing limbs because sailors were often missing limbs. It’s the dangerous nature of the job. And there were hooks on ships. It would be an easy prosthetic for someone to put together. And we know post World War II that hook prosthetics are really useful. A lot of people actually favor them over more elaborate ones because you can do a lot of things with them, and they’re easy to manipulate. So, it just made sense that pirates wore prosthetics. 

But I spent hours trying to find an image of a pirate with a hook hand for my producer and I came up with nothing. 

Q: If that’s the case, where did this visual of pirates with prosthetics come from?

A: Literature. It really comes from StevensonRobert Louis Stevenson created the fictional character Long John Silver, who was missing a leg in the 1883 novel "Treasure Island.". And there’s also a lot of evidence that pirate (characters) on stage used prosthetics a lot in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As my article talks about, that’s because of the way that disability kind of signifies evil for 19th-century audiences. It’s a specific kind of shorthand that they’re using there.

Q: Is Captain Hook an example of that shorthand?

A: Well, Captain Hook did have a hook. That was part of his characterization from the very beginning. That was (J.M. Barrie’s) imagination of him. He gives him a fabulous mustache and not just a hook, but two hooks that are razor sharp and can be used for killing opponents and smoking cigars. So, he’s creating a stage villain, and pulling in symbols that he knows his audience will see as signs of evil.

Q: Are there other myths about pirates?

A: Yes. One of the myths is that primary booty of pirates was gold, treasure and jewels. Obviously, if they came across gold and jewels, they would take it. But most pirate booty was fungible goods like cloths, spices, rum, coffee. Stuff you could sell. 

Q: Is it important that these myths be corrected, or can we just enjoy them?

A: That’s a great question. I’ve sometimes described my work as the pedagogy of rumination. Because I challenge people’s stories and say, “No, that’s not true.” But it’s not wrong to enjoy a story. I teach about "Treasure Island" because it’s a good yarn. I watch pirate shows on TV. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a character, having these stories being something very meaningful to people. But I do think there’s a point at which you say, “This is a great story, but do you maybe want to know the real tale behind it?” Because it’s also interesting, but it will make you feel differently.

Q: Let’s switch topics. As the new English department chair, what are your goals?

A: The English department at ASU is, I think, among the very strongest in the nation. At a time when people are very wrong-headedly contracting and devaluing their English departments, we are not. We are getting support from the administration. We are keeping all six of our programs (creative writing; English education; film and media studies; linguistics and applied linguistics; literature; and writing, rhetorics and literacies), which is wonderful and allows us to have diversity in the department. That’s vital. We’re also bringing in the best teachers to make sure that not just our undergrads but our graduate students have the training that they deserve.

Q: Is that commitment why you decided to leave Purdue and come to ASU?

A: One of the things that drew me here is that this is a place with a vision for the role that English has in a healthy university. I think that’s one of the things that’s really special about ASU. You get the sense here if you talk to the faculty, staff and students that everybody’s very proud of the English department. It’s very, very nice to be working with a group of people that have a good purpose.