Before this time, British privateers such as Sir Henry Morgan sailed under English colours. ġ725 woodcut of Stede Bonnet with a Jolly Roger in Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyratesġ7th and 18th century colonial governors usually required privateers to fly a specific version of the British flag, the 1606 Union Jack with a white crest in the middle, also distinguishing them from naval vessels. The entry describes pirates using the flag, not on a ship but on land. Īn early record of the skull-and-crossbones design being used on a (red) flag by pirates is found in a Decementry in a log book held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Contemporary accounts show Peter Easton using a plain black flag in 1612 a plain black flag was also used by Captain Martel's pirates in 1716, Edward Teach aka Blackbeard, Charles Vane, and Richard Worley in 1718, and Howell Davis in 1719. There are mentions of Francis Drake flying a black flag as early as 1585, but the historicity of this tradition has been called into question. But an early reference to Muslim corsairs flying a skull symbol, in the context of a 1625 slave raid on Cornwall, explicitly refers to the symbol being shown on a green flag. It possibly originated among the Barbary pirates of the period, which would connect the black colour of the Jolly Roger to the Muslim black flag. The first recorded uses of the skull-and-crossbones symbol on naval flags date to the 17th century. Design įurther information: Skull and crossbones (military) and Totenkopf This Flag they called Old Roger, and us'd to say, They would live and die under it. It had in it the Portraiture of Death, with an Hour-Glass in one Hand, and a Dart in the other, striking into a Heart, and three Drops of Blood delineated as falling from it. Their black Flag, under which they had committed abundance of Pyracies and Murders, was affix'd to one Corner of the Gallows. Some of them delivered what they had to say in writing, and most of them said something at the Place of Execution, advising all People, young ones especially, to take warning by their unhappy Fate, and to avoid the crimes that brought them to it. This Day, 26 of the Pirates taken by his Majesty Ship the Greyhound, Captain Solgard, were executed here. Īnother early reference to "Old Roger" is found in a news report in the Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer (London, Saturday, OctoIssue LVII, page 2, col. In 1703, a pirate named John Quelch was reported to have been flying the "Old Roger" off Brazil, "Old Roger" being a nickname for the devil. Jolly Roger had been a generic term for a jovial, carefree man since at least the 17th century and the existing term seems to have been applied to the skeleton or grinning skull in these flags by the early 18th century. Richard Hawkins, who was captured by pirates in 1724, reported that the pirates had a black flag bearing the figure of a skeleton stabbing a heart with a spear, which they named "Jolly Roger". Neither Spriggs' nor Roberts' Jolly Roger consisted of a skull and crossbones. While Spriggs and Roberts used the same name for their flags, their flag designs were quite different, suggesting that already "Jolly Roger" was a generic term for black pirate flags rather than a name for any single specific design. Johnson specifically cites two pirates as having named their flag "Jolly Roger": Bartholomew Roberts in June, 1721 and Francis Spriggs in December 1723. Use of the term Jolly Roger in reference to pirate flags goes back to at least Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, published in Britain in 1724.
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