Even Johnny Depp, OTT pirate extraordinaire, might blanch at the idea of being asked to portray Morat Rais, the legendary pirate captain who carried out the sack of Baltimore.
A master tactician who orchestrated audacious slave raids as far north as Iceland, he was not some mustachioed Ottoman general but a middle-class Dutchman who began life as plain Jan Jansen. He converted to Islam after being taken into slavery himself while running a business on the island of Lanzarote. He continued to operate right into his 60s, a highly respectable age for a pirate; and two of his sons emigrated to the US, where one of them, Anthony Jansen Van Salee, went on to become one of Manhattan's most prominent citizens.
"Morat Rais was an appalling character, guilty of enormous atrocities," says Des Ekin. "But everyone who met him found him terrifically charming. He was a natural diplomat who would, I think, have been quite at home in modern politics."