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Flags and the Jolly Roger

The black and red colours flown by golden-age pirates as instruments of intimidation, the death's heads, hourglasses, darts and bleeding hearts painted on them, the late arrival of the English name "Jolly Roger", and the modern designs that no period source supports.

Also writtenJolly Roger; Old Roger; Pirate colours; Black flag; Bloody flag; Death's head flag

Pirates of the golden age flew flags to make a fight unnecessary. There was no single pirate flag. The black banner with a white skull over crossed bones, called the Jolly Roger, is a later tidying of a practice that was various and personal.

What was flown

There was no standard pirate flag but a different device for each company, on black grounds and sometimes red, drawn from a shared vocabulary of mortality: a death's head or a whole skeleton, an hourglass, cross bones, a dart, a bleeding heart and drops of blood falling from it. Bartholomew Roberts's ships came to Whydah with "a black Silk Flag flying at their Mizen-Peek" which "had a Death in it, with an Hour-Glass in one Hand, and cross Bones in the other, a Dart by it, and underneath a Heart dropping three Drops of Blood"; Worley "made a black Ensign, with a white Death's Head in the Middle of it"; and Low "hoists a black Flag, with the Figure of Death in red". What the hourglass was taken to signify the 1724 narrative does not say. Pirates kept no roll of arms.¹

Colours shown openly marked a crew as pirates rather than privateers holding a commission, which would have sharpened the charge at trial.

Old Roger, and the name

The name "Jolly Roger" was in print by 1724.²

Where the name came from is not settled. Two derivations recur: the French "jolie rouge", "pretty red", supposedly a name for the red privateer flag, and "Old Roger", an old familiar name for the devil or for death, which fits the skeletal imagery. The French derivation is the more popular and the weaker, thin in French sources and better treated as folk etymology.

Roberts's own colours

The 1724 General History of the Pyrates, published under the name Captain Charles Johnson, is the principal early source for individual captains' flags, and it embellishes. It figures Bartholomew Roberts on his own colours with a flaming sword and a device of two figures over the letters ABH and AMH, a Barbadian's Head and a Martinican's Head, for his grudge against the governors of Barbados and Martinique.

The flags that were never flown

The most famous pirate flag of all is a modern one. The horned skeleton holding an hourglass and spearing a bleeding heart, reproduced everywhere as Blackbeard's, first appears in a Mariner's Mirror article of 1912 and was attached to Edward Thache, master of the Queen Anne's Revenge, only afterwards. The one contemporary account of Thache's colours, a newspaper report of 1718, says only that his ships flew "Black Flags and Deaths Heads in them", other sloops carrying "Bloody Flags".³

No original golden-age pirate flag is known to survive. Nearly every image in circulation is a reconstruction, worked up from a description in a log, a newspaper or the General History, or from a later illustrator's invention.⁴

Several ornate captain-specific designs, Christopher Moody's among them, are attributed on thin or possibly mistaken grounds. Nineteenth and twentieth-century fiction, illustration and film then fixed the single white skull on black in popular memory, and twentieth-century illustrators supplied captain-specific flags that no period source describes.

What the sources cannot give is a flag. No physical golden-age pirate colours have been authenticated, so every design here is known at second hand, through words. The etymology stays open without an early French use of "jolie rouge" or a documented English chain from "Old Roger", and the designs carried by the General History alone, Roberts's flaming sword and the letters ABH and AMH among them, would move only on trial records, newspapers or logs not yet read. The rest are known from logs, newspapers and that one printed narrative.

What the evidence does not settle

Jolly Roger etymology

Jolly Roger's origin is contested between French jolie rouge and Old Roger

Earliest documented pirate flag

Wynne's flag, about 1700, may not be the earliest one flown

Surviving flag images

Whether any physical Golden Age pirate flag survives, and the evidence behind later reconstructionsUnverified

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

There was no single standard pirate flag: the period narrative describes a different device for each company, on black grounds and sometimes red, drawn from a shared vocabulary of mortality. Bartholomew Roberts's ships came to Whydah with "a black Silk Flag flying at their Mizen-Peek" which "had a Death in it, with an Hour-Glass in one Hand, and cross Bones in the other, a Dart by it, and underneath a Heart dropping three Drops of Blood"; Worley "made a black Ensign, with a white Death's Head in the Middle of it"; Low hoisted "a black Flag, with the Figure of Death in red"; and Spriggs's company made a black ensign "which they called Jolly Roger", carrying "a white Skeliton in the Middle of it, with a Dart in one Hand striking a bleeding Heart, and in the other, an Hour-Glass". Red grounds appear as the "bloody Flag" of Bonnet's men and in a taken master's account of "black and bloody Flags". What the hourglass was taken to signify is not stated in the source. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period narrative, with a naval surgeon's journal: A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), attributed to Captain Charles Johnson, in the project's text of the work: of Roberts's ships at Whydah, "They came to Whydah with a St. George's Ensign, a black Silk Flag flying at their Mizen-Peek, and a Jack and Pendant of the same: The Flag had a Death in it, with an Hour-Glass in one Hand, and cross Bones in the other, a Dart by it, and underneath a Heart dropping three Drops of Blood"; of Worley, "He made a black Ensign, with a white Death's Head in the Middle of it, and other Colours suitable to it"; of Low, he "hoists a black Flag, with the Figure of Death in red, at the Main-topmast Head"; of Spriggs, "a black Ensign was made, which they called Jolly Roger, with the same Device that Captain Low carried, viz. a white Skeliton in the Middle of it, with a Dart in one Hand striking a bleeding Heart, and in the other, an Hour-Glass"; the name is glossed elsewhere as "Jolly Roger, (the Name they give their black Flag,)"; of Bonnet's men in Cape Fear river, "The Pyrates made a Wiff in their bloody Flag"; and a taken master, "with their black and bloody Flags hanging over us". For the black flag independently, John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies (1735), of the taking of Roberts's ships at Cape Lopez: "they cut their Cable, set their Sails, up went the black Flag, and down their Courage".
The name "Jolly Roger" is attested in print by 1724. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative: A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, attributed to Captain Charles Johnson, 1724
The horned skeleton spearing a bleeding heart, widely sold as Blackbeard's flag, has no eighteenth-century evidence behind it: the design first appears in a Mariner's Mirror article of 1912 and was attached to Edward Teach only afterwards, the sole contemporary account of his colours being a newspaper report of 1718 describing "Black Flags and Deaths Heads in them" and other sloops carrying "Bloody Flags". Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Institutional archaeology publication citing period newspaper: Queen Anne's Revenge Project, Did You Know Blackbeard's Flag is a Modern Design?, 6 October 2017, citing the historian E. T. Fox
No original golden-age pirate flag is known to survive, so nearly every design in circulation is a reconstruction from a verbal description in a log, a newspaper or the 1724 General History, or from a later illustrator's invention. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Institutional archaeology publication: Queen Anne's Revenge Project, Did You Know Blackbeard's Flag is a Modern Design?