I learned this today. The Jolly Roger was the flag used by pirates, but nobody really knows why it was called the Jolly Roger and there were many different versions of it.
We generally think of pirates as being people like Blackbeard and Captain Kidd and most of these pirates operated in the Caribbean. The era of piracy that we imagine was from about 1500 to the late 1860s, but the “Golden age of Piracy” was from 1660 and 1726. However, piracy goes back much further than that.
Piracy is basically an act of robbery or violence by the people of one ship on another ship. Usually, the goal is to steal the cargo. Piracy has existed ever since people have transported things by boat.
The earliest records of piracy are by the Sea Peoples. They were a confederation of seafaring people and they attacked ships belonging to Egypt and other Mediterranean countries starting in about 1200 BC. And piracy has continued throughout recorded history. The Vikings were renowned for their piracy.
There are probably three main reasons why piracy took off in the Caribbean when it did in the 16th century. Firstly, European powers were building up their navies, which gave pirates a pool of experienced sailors looking for a more lucrative career to choose from. Secondly, trade with the New World was increasing and there were many ships carrying valuable treasure from the Americas to Europe. And thirdly, a lot of nations turned a blind eye, so long as the pirates were looting their enemies. There is a very fine line between a privateer ship carrying a letter of marque and a pirate ship.
There is no definitive reason why the flag came to be known as the Jolly Roger. And it is not known for definite when it picked up that name.
Skulls and bones had been used on flags long before they become known as the Jolly Roger. There is evidence of pirates using them from at least 1670. However, a lot of pirates would have flown a red flag in the 17th century because this is the color flag that the British Admiralty obliged privateers (ships carrying a letter of marque) to fly. It was called the Red Jack.
Pirates started to add skulls and bones to these Red Jack flags from the mid 17th century. The earliest record of the skull and crossbones being used on a red flag comes from 1687.
As more privateers turned to piracy and the number of pirates increased, they started to design their own flags so as to be immediately recognizable. Edward Low (1690 to 1724) had a black flag with a red skeleton. Bartholomew Roberts (1682 to 1722) had Death and an image of himself holding an hourglass. Calico Jack (1682 to 1720) had a skull over two crossed swords. Edward England (1685 to 1721) had a regular skull and crossbones. Benjamin Hornigold (1680 to 1719, best known for giving Blackbeard his start) had a skull and an hourglass.
Often pirate ships would fly more than one flag and each one would have a different meaning. They would fly a regular privateer flag or the flag of a country to lull a target ship into a false sense of security so that they could get close. Then they would fly their pirate flag to show their real intentions. If the target ship didn’t give up, the pirate ship would fly a red flag, which meant that no quarter would be given unless the target ship surrendered straight away. I expect that most ships did surrender pretty quickly.
As I said, there is no definitive reason why the flag is called the Jolly Roger. Here are some of the most likely reasons.
The red flag flown by the privateers was called le jolie rouge (the pretty red) in French. It is not a huge stretch of the imagination to go from that to the Jolly Roger.
A Welsh pirate called Bartholomew Roberts was known to fly a skull and crossbones flag and he was famous for fighting in red silks. The French also nicknamed him le jolie rouge. However, Roberts and another pirate called Francis Spriggs were already calling their flags the Jolly Roger at that time, which would suggest that the name was already around.
The word Roger has been used to mean the devil at some times. A group of pirates hanged in 1723 had a flag with a skeleton holding an hourglass and a bleeding heart whom they called Old Roger, meaning the devil. Jolly Roger could just mean the jolly devil.
Whatever the origins of the name, the standard skull and crossbones Jolly Roger had been adopted by almost all pirates by 1730.
By the 1720s, trade between England, Spain, and the Americas began to increase dramatically, and piracy was negatively affecting England’s economy. The Royal Navy was tasked with ending piracy and most of the famous pirates were killed or caught and executed in that decade. Approximately 600 pirates were killed.
So, the origin of the name Jolly Roger is unknown, but pirates did fly the Jolly Roger flag. Each pirate had their own version of it until about 1730 when the flag seems to have been standardized. And this is what I learned today.
Sources:
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1813/the-jolly-roger–other-pirate-flags/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolly_Roger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_Caribbean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Piracy
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/why-did-pirates-fly-the-jolly-roger/
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-16164191
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1173,00.html
https://www.vispronet.com/blog/famous-pirate-flags/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Low
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_Roberts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_Jack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_England
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Napin