kiwimidnight:

James Flint in every episode:
XVII.  Did I ever tell you where that name came from? I told you of my grandfather who raised me. A fisherman in Padstow.
Well, in his youth he was a deckhand on a privateer off the coast of Massachusetts.
And one night he was alone on the late watch at anchor in the Boston Harbor when he sees this man climbing out of the water and onto his ship. A stranger.
Now, my grandfather thought about ringing the bell, but curiosity got the better of him.
The stranger approaches my grandfather and asks him for a little rum. Man said that he’d fled his fishing trawler.
Accused of killing another man. And when asked his name, the man simply replied ’Mr. Flint’.
This stranger, he never said whether he was guilty of the killing or why he chose that ship or where he was bound, he just…
Just sat there. Eventually, he asked my grandfather for a little more rum from below.
My grandfather went off to fetch it, but when he returned the man was gone. My grandfather was in Boston for a month after that.
Never heard a word about a killing or a fugitive at large.
It was as if the sea had conjured that man out of nothing and then taken him back for some unknowable purpose.
When I first met Mr. Gates and he asked me my name… I feared the man I was about to create.
I feared that someone born of such dark things would consume me were I not careful. And I was determined only to wear him for a while
and then dispose of him when his purpose was complete. And I thought of that story. Am I ready to let him go?
Truth is every day I’ve worn that name I’ve hated him a little more.
I’ve been ready to return him to the sea for a long time.