The Jolly Roger and pirate flags

The pirate flag, the Jolly Roger, is one of the most famous flags in the world, even though no country has ever had it. Its message was so clear that it did not need to be read: if you saw one on the horizon, you knew you were in trouble. In this article we tell you how it was used, what its symbols meant and where its name comes from.

The short answer

Black flag: in the golden age of piracy, it warned that if you surrendered, your life would be spared.
Red (“bloody”) flag: it warned that there would be no mercy.
Skull, bones, hourglass, heart…: symbols of death and violence, meant to frighten.
The aim: for the victim to surrender without a fight.

Why is it called the Jolly Roger?

Nobody knows for sure. The first text to use the name is Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates (1724), which says that Bartholomew Roberts (1721) and Francis Spriggs (1723) called their flags “Jolly Roger”, although the designs were different. It was probably a generic name for pirates’ black flags. “Old Roger” was also a name for the devil or death.

Two much-repeated theories are discounted by historians for lack of evidence from the period: that it comes from the French joli rouge (“pretty red”, a privateer’s red flag) and that it comes from a supposed pirate called “Ali Rajah”.

How it was used

Pirates usually approached their prey flying the flag of some country, or none, so as not to frighten it and stop it escaping. When they were within range, they raised the black flag, often with a warning shot. They wanted the ship to surrender without a fight, and surrendering was called “striking the colours”.

Raising a Jolly Roger also made it clear that its bearer was a pirate, not a privateer or a government ship: each had different rules about accepting a surrender. In June 1720, when Roberts arrived with his black flags at the harbour of Trepassey, the crews of 22 ships abandoned their vessels.

Black and red

In the golden-age years, the black flag meant that quarter (mercy) would be given to those who surrendered; the red, the “bloody” flag, that there would be no mercy and that force would be used. The red one was already an ordinary naval flag, not exclusive to pirates. And not all used both: Charles Vane, for example, used only a black flag with a death’s head, which meant he neither gave nor took quarter. It is said that Jean Thomas Dulaien, after raising the red one, waited for three or more cannon shots from the enemy before attacking.

The symbols

The most common were the skull with crossed bones, a skeleton (often stabbing a heart), an hourglass (the victim’s life running out), an arm with a sword, swords, pistols, cannon, powder horns and bundles of arrows. Almost all meant death and violence.

Famous pirates and their flags

Each pirate captain had a design of his own. These are some of the best known, according to tradition:

Edward England: skull and crossed bones.

Blackbeard (Edward Teach): a skeleton with an hourglass and a bleeding heart.

Henry Every: he used it with a red or black background.

Christopher Moody.

John Rackham, “Calico Jack”: he swapped the two bones for two sabres.

Bartholomew Roberts used two flags: on this one, a sailor with a skeleton holding an hourglass.

Roberts’s second: a pirate standing on two skulls and the letters ABH AMH, “A Barbadian’s Head” and “A Martiniquan’s Head”. He put them as a challenge to the governors of Barbados and Martinique, who had sent ships to hunt him down.

Thomas Tew.

Jean Thomas Dulaien: a skull, bones and a naked man with a cutlass, plus a red pennant.

John Quelch: piercing a heart with a spear, and a clock in his hand.

Edward Low: a red skeleton.

Pirates, privateers and warships

If you met pirates such as Blackbeard or Stede Bonnet, or feared privateers such as Henry Morgan or Francis Drake, and surrendered, perhaps the best option was to have died fighting, given how they treated their prisoners. A privateer was a sailor with a government’s permission to attack enemy ships; a pirate had none.

Portrait of Edward Teach, Blackbeard.

Women pirates

Between the 18th and 19th centuries there were also women pirates. The best known are Anne Bonny, Mary Read and Ching Shih.

Ching Shih (c. 1775–1844), born near Xinhui (Guangdong), led the pirates of the South China Sea from 1801 to 1810. In 1801 she married the pirate Zheng Yi and, after his death in 1807, took over his business with the support of his adopted son Zhang Bao. Zheng Yi commanded the largest of six fleets, the Red Flag Fleet, with some 200 ships; in 1805 the pirate confederation numbered about 400 junks and between 40,000 and 70,000 pirates. She was never taken prisoner: she surrendered to the Qing authorities on 20 April 1810 and was pardoned; she then commanded 24 ships and 1,433 pirates. Afterwards she ran a gambling house and died in Nanhai in 1844. The three pirate codes often attributed to her were in fact issued by Zhang Bao.

Ching Shih.

Anne Bonny and Mary Read were tried. Both joined John Rackham’s (“Calico Jack”) crew in August 1720; on 22 August they helped steal the sloop William in Nassau. On 22 October 1720 the crew was captured near Negril Point (Jamaica). Rackham was tried on 16 November and hanged on the 18th; Bonny and Read were tried on 28 November in Spanish Town and sentenced to hang. Both said they were pregnant, which delayed the execution. Mary Read died in prison around April 1721. There is no record of Anne Bonny’s execution or release, and what became of her is unknown.

Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

Today

The Atlantic and Caribbean pirates in this list were active mainly between 1714 and 1725, in what is usually called the golden age of piracy. Today the Jolly Roger is used as a rebel symbol by some, or to accuse others of illegality. Piracy is now associated with the copying and distribution of copyrighted products, above all on the Internet, and from it the Pirate Party was born, which defends everyone’s right to culture through the Internet, free from government control, and opposes disproportionate copyright.

Even today the Jolly Roger is flown by tradition by some British Royal Navy submarines when they return from a mission in which they have sunk an enemy ship, as HMS Conqueror did in the Falklands War (1982).