Under the Banner of the Jolly Roger: Pirate Flags of the Atlantic World

ENDNOTES

Emerging in the mid-twentieth century, vexillology (the study of flags) has continued to gain popularity among both artists and historians. Flags are useful tools for individual and cultural communication: through merely visual elements the viewer gains an understanding of all necessary information associated with that image. Consider the Jolly Roger, the name given to the flags that identified pirate ships on the Atlantic. Popular culture has largely romanticized pirates and the culture they created. The successful Pirates of the Caribbean enterprise, including movies, toys, and all manner of branded paraphernalia, portrays multiple flags, many of which are associated with Jack Sparrow, the embodiment of liberated, post-modern subjectivity. As one author writes, Sparrow is “ruled by his desires and completely at odds with the staid worlds of work and civilization.”1 How we interpret historical pirates today is often a reflection of these images and cultural insignia. But what exactly were historical pirate flags, and what do they represent? An historical analysis of pirate flags expands our understanding of seafaring on the Atlantic. Sea robbery has been in practice for as long as people have travelled and traded on the seas. While exact dates differ from one historian to another, the “golden age of piracy” is dated roughly between 1650 and 1730.2 Even during periods of peace between the Atlantic imperial nations, privateers continued to rob ships, often limiting their list of enemies to those traditional of their mother country.3 On the open waters of the Atlantic, ships efficiently identified each other through flags. The history of flags used by pirate ships is difficult to determine. Like much else about their lives, pirates left very little recorded evidence due to their predominantly felonious activities. What pirate wanted to keep a diary to incriminate themselves? Pirate flags that have survived are often synthesized recreations made by different historical artists. Unfortunately, these recreations were often used for decoration and were subject to artists’ creativity, rather than detailed historic renditions.4 Therefore, the term “Jolly Roger” has come to embrace various pirate flag designs. Today, the Jolly Roger bears no legal meaning, but remains a cultural icon of piracy.5 Flags have played a unique role through history of communicating individuals’ means through symbols, offering a leveling of languages and cultures. According to the European laws of war, plain white flags signify non-hostility.6 Plain red flags signal the opposite— intense hostility, or oriflammes, declaring an army’s intention to execute all enemies captured, and it is believed that the Jolly Roger originated from this.7 Traditionally during land conflicts, armies would approach each other with flags representing their allegiance to a ruling power and goals of the battle. After one side raised a plain red flag and indicated that it would deny “quarter” (refusal to spare captured lives), the other army would usually reciprocate with a similar red flag. Raising the white flag of non-hostility signalled surrender. On sea, pirates also raised red flags or banners to signify their intent to attack, and quickly the unfurling of red flags by an unidentified vessel at sea became a sign of a pirate attack.8 Over time, these red flags were enhanced with other imagery, particularly recognizable symbols of death. The skull image was taken from ship captains who used it as a marginal sign in their logs to indicate crew deaths.9 In this case, the plain red flag with white skull charges could be regarded as the most terrifying.10

Anneli Karlsson, A Typical Pirate Flag, Photograph, 2009, Wikimedia Commons.

While a red background symbolized bloodshed and warfare, on the open seas white charges are more easily distinguished against darker colours. This leads historians to suggest contrast as pirates’ reason for transitioning to the current “traditional” black background with a white skull and crossbones Jolly Roger.11 This Jolly Roger was well used, with approximately 2500 men sailing under it.12 A functional symbol, the black and white Jolly Roger offered a visual foreshadowing for anyone who considered resisting a pirate attack, as well as to symbolize pirates’ lack of concern for their own mortality.13 The flag was intended to strike terror into the hearts of their target, but with interlocking symbols of death, violence, and limited time, also pointed to meaningful elements of the seaman’s experience.14 A pirate was considered already a condemned man, and their choice of flag represented both their intent to terrorize, and their disregard for the strategies of state terrorism mobilized against them.15 Pirates were considered hostis humanis generis, a common enemy against all mankind.16 The explicit rejection of the nation state was a major part of pirates’ foundation for community. If a pirate sailed under the Jolly Roger, they had a connection to a larger social order based on this principal. The vast waters of the Atlantic provided no rules or stark geographical boundaries, allowing pirates the freedom to determine (or change) their own social hierarchies and core values.

Top Flag: “Jolly Roger pirate flag of Bartholomew Roberts, as described in the Boston Gazette,” August 22, 1790, Wikimedia Commons. Remaining Flags: Charles Johnson, “Flag of Bartholomew Roberts,” A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, 1724, Wikimedia Commons

Bartholomew Roberts was a Welsh pirate and, based on surviving records, is considered the most successful pirate of the golden age of piracy. He is also one of the most artistic, creating multiple renditions of the Jolly Roger for use aboard his ships. Creativity was not limited amongst other pirates, including Captain James Mission, a French-born pirate who had large dreams of creating the pirate’s republic of “Libertalia.” This led to Mission’s “amazing and unique” pirate flag of a white background with the motto “for God and liberty” embroidered upon it.17

The design, while initially criticized by his newly elected boatswain Marhew Tondu, “brought down a full blast of eloquence from Caraccioli, the new lieutenant, who objected that ‘they were no pirated but men who were resolved to affect the Liberties which God and Nature gave them.’”18 While each group of pirates may have created a different “Jolly Roger”, it is likely many victims of pirates’ endeavors encountered similar fates.

The Jolly Roger continued as a cultural symbol into sea conflicts long after the golden age of pirates ended. In 1942, the British Royal Navy submarine NS Talisman returned to port after a successful war patrol of 26,213 sea miles, with the crew proudly displaying the Jolly Roger to record their success against the enemy.19 Around the popular skull and crossbones are other charges indicating a tally of sunken enemy ships. As the Jolly Roger continues to leave its mark on popular culture through media, cinema, and paraphernalia, this flag points to tales truly as old as the seas.

Oliver Touzeau, Flag of Libertalia, April 12, 2017. Flags of the World, Fair use.

J. A. Hampton, SS Talisman Jolly Roger, 1942, Wikimedia Commons.

Janina Ritzen Pulfer

MAIH (History stream)