Booty: Captain Teach Wonders Too

Fellow Pirate of the New World, founder of NOLA Pyrate Week (March 25 to April 4 this year) and dear friend Captain Swallow inspired today’s post with this tweet on Wednesday:

What the flaming hell is this misbegotten bit o' tat?!? That's not bloody Blackbeard’s flag! (link redacted for the sake of brevity) THIS IS! (again with the link)

The good and true Captain’s outrage is well founded and based on this:That is the “flag of the famous pirate Blackbeard” according to this article from ScreenCrave.com. The flag has no historical link to Edward Teach but is in fact the design that will be used in the upcoming movie Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Teach’s actual flag is displayed at the header.

Now, before you PoTC fans start huffing and fuming, allow me to point out a few crucial issues. First and foremost there has never been much in the way of accuracy in any of the PoTC films. I know that for a fact. I don’t know everything, in fact I’m ignorant on many scores, but the PoTC franchise is not and never will be history. It’s entertainment. So please stop brow-beating us about its historical relevance.

Second, I understand very well that this movie is based (very loosely it seems from the synopsis in the article) on Tim Powers’ novel On Stranger Tides. And that is a step in the right direction if you ask me; Powers obviously did his research. Also, as a writer, I salute Mr. Powers for his savvy attachment to Disney but allow me to point out that he knew what Blackbeard’s flag looked like according to his prose.

Third, I have no problem with fictionalization and the need to tell a good story but why mess with perfection? Captain Teach, like his contemporaries, chose the design of his flag with care in an effort to frighten and intimidate with symbols that would be readily understood by anyone of the era. An hour glass, a skeletal figure with a spear and a bleeding heart are hard to miss: your time is short, surrender your ship and your goods or meet bloody death. Frankly all the Disney flag imparts is step aside for sparkly vampire zombies. Which, I believe, brings us back to my first point.

I can hear the arguments already and still they fall on deaf ears. Captain Swallow, very much as usual, I’m with you on this one.

Tools Of The Trade: "Run Up The Colours!"

The drama of the sea battle, as Hollywood would have it anyway, is enhanced by the giant flag that unfurls from the tall ship as she comes into view. As Benerson Little quips in his excellent book The Sea Rover's Practice: "We are all familiar with the flag waving in the representation of a spy glass lense, an unknown sail now recognized." Well said. In fairness, some movies do manage to get it right. When Jack Aubrey turns to his midshipman and says "Run up the colours, Mr. Boyle," as Suprise engages Acheron, you know Peter Weir has been reading his O'Brian. Master and Commander, once again, gives us a glimpse of life as it really was at sea.


In fact, the use of "flags" as true identifiers of nationality was virtually unthinkable until the Napoleonic era. Flags, which were almost always referred to as "colors" at sea, were constantly changing prior to roughly 1780. The colors that we might recognize - the tricolour of France shown above, for instance - were unknown in the 18th century and unheard of prior to that. As an example, French ships were generally flying the pavillon blanc which was nothing more than a white flag perhaps kissed with an embroidered fleur-de-lis in one corner. Even close by it would be nearly impossible for an untrained eye to tell whether the ship was a French merchant, French man-of-war, or a freebooter using a ruse.


Another argument against routinely showing one's colors was expense and handling. Flags were made of hand loomed wool originally and in heavy weather or high winds they would unravel alarmingly. The cost of flying one's flag regularly was so prohibitive that even war ships were restricted to flying their colors when engaging an enemy or at anchor in a neutral port. Then, too, these flags were necessarily large - sometimes the size of the main and course sails on a mizzen mast - so they added weight, befuddled rigging and robbed a ship of speed and maneuverability.


Before the 19th century, ship's flags were called "ancients" (from which the English word "ensign" for an identifying flag is descendant) and - in theory at least - ships were to fly the ancient of their nation, home port or merchant company. Even in honest circumstances, however, this could turn into a confusing quagmire fairly quickly. Just as an example, here are some pendants and ancients from the Dutch merchant service of the 18th century (courtesy of the Heilongjiang Archives):

All of these colors would have been perfectly legal for the appropriate Dutch merchant to fly, but trying to discern the subtle differences at any reasonable distance would have been maddening. When one considers that the spy glass was rarely taken into the tops due to it's extreme cost, the impossibilities are clear. Add the fact that a pirate carried several flags aboard her to run up as ruses to catch prey and you can throw colors over the taffrail as far as identifying another ship. Your best bet was to know what types of ships came from what countries and watch the handling of the ship. Merchant seamen were - due to routinely small crews - unfortunately lubberly in the handling of their ships.

As another example, here is the evolution of the British Union Jack:

Some or all of these flags would have been flown at the same time and the designs were never in the main body of the flag itself. The field of the flag would have been red or blue while the canton (where the stars are on the U.S. flag, for instance) would have held the precious identifying symbol. Honestly, gentlemen, why bother?

Pirate flags as separate entities did not appear until the early 18th century. Most began simply as the red flag, pavillon rouge or sometimes jolie rouge which was understood as a sign that no quarter was expected and none would be given. Fancy flags, some black (originally a signal of plague aboard the ship) and some still red, with skulls and swords and the like began to develop during the Golden Age of Piracy and we've talked about them before. Even so, many pirates chose to sail under the legal ancient of a country or countries. Bartholomew Roberts flew a Dutch flag routinely and Michele de Grammont only ran up the French pavillon blanc if he bothered with an ancient at all.

As the age of nationalism dawned in the early 19th century, it became more common for ships to fly the flag of their country. Improvements in textiles made it possible to unfurl your ancient more frequently and the new countries in the Americas - born of hard fought revolutions and proud of their accomplishments - embraced and honored their colors as symbols of freedom. Francis Scott Keye's poem about seeing the U.S.'s Star Spangled Banner from the British prison hulk where he was being kept during the bombardment of Washington D.C. is just one example of the feeling a country's colors could inspire in it's people.

This new nationalism changed the way that the ruse was used in naval engagements and by the 1850s it was no longer considered honorable to sail under false colors. Such things didn't bother the pirates and/or privateers of the era, however. The Laffite brothers and their associates, for instance, happily sailed under whatever colors would buy them a hint of legitimacy. During the Galveston days they raised the ancient of the Congress of Mexico - a red and green checkered flag. The Congress, unfortunately, existed for only a few months and never actually issued a flag but why worry about details, mon frere?

My advice to you, mate: keep a young man with good eyes in the tops and trust no one out there. To paraphrase Nelson: all are foes until proven friends. If it's good enough for Britain's God of War, it's good enough for me.

Tools of the Trade: You Gotta Support Your Team

Ahoy Brethren and I apologize for the brief neglect of my beloved Triple P. The family and I were having one last gasp of fun before school overcame us
this morning. But I'm back now and I'm here to talk to you all about pirate flags.



The origins of the pirate flag are sketchy at best. Most authorities (if there are such things as "pirate authorities") put forth that the black flags with their deliciously creepy images grew out of warning flags flown at sea from ancient times. Particularly during the years of the Black Plague in Europe, ships began to fly red or black flags if plague was aboard. This was a way to warn other ships and various ports that pestilence was among the crew and contagion was more than likely. It was not necessarily a voluntary situation, however. Sometimes a know-it-all on a fellow ship would spot one of your guys sporting a bad case of impetigo and you'd be forced at cannon point to raise the red flag. Then getting into port could be a real pain, unless you were a little underhanded and managed to lose that red flag at sea. Maybe lose the guy with the crusty scabs too. That might help.



Anyway, pirates caught on pretty early that they could use the fear factor of contagion via the red flag to their advantage and so the original pirate flags were thought to be made of red cloth with various designs. These flags were called by their French name: Jolie Rouge. Literally "Pretty Red". French is so whimsical, isn't it? From this, some say, we get the term "Jolly Roger".

The flags displayed images designed to intimidate and many of these were taken from graveyard imagery. Directly above is the flag of Christopher Moody which includes an hour glass with wings and a skull and crossbones. Anyone who has seen pictures or rubbings from 16th and 17th century graveyards will recognize these kind of emblems. On headstones, they were used to remind onlookers that they'd end up dead too one day. In the case of this flag, the handy addition of the burly arm with the sword simply brings on the high note of "resistance is futile; surrender or die". In a time when very few people could read, this kind of imagery was clear and readily understood by everyone who came in contact with it.

When did red fall out of favor and black come into its own? It seems like the buccaneers of Cuba and San Domingue favored the red flags but once the Golden Age of piracy washed over the Caribbean in the 1700s, black flags became the rage. Up above we have, among others, the flags of Jack Rackham, Henry Every and of course Edward Teach with the skeleton making ready to stab a heart with a spear. That gets the message across without a word over the rails and more than one merchant ship simply gave up once these Jolly Rogers were raised.

For privateers, like their naval cousins, a ruse de guerre was more to the point than any showy black flag. Simply determine what country your prize was from and then run up that flag - or one of a neutral or friendly country - until you were close enough to reveal your "true colors". This was considered a fair and gentlemanly approach and even nautical heroes such as John Paul Jones and Horatio Nelson used this tack without the least bit of guilt.

So there you are. Go find a flag you like and hang it prominently for all to see. Just be sure you know which pirate ran it up back in the day. You want to be able to say when someone asks!