Blackbeard’s flag

A black flag with a horned skeleton holding an hourglass and a spear aimed at a bleeding heart, sold today as the flag of Edward Teach, “Blackbeard” (died 1718). No record from his lifetime describes it; the design was first drawn in 1912 and given to Blackbeard decades later.

Historical flags. Also called blackbeard flag, blackbeard’s flag, edward teach flag.

Meaning

The only description of Blackbeard’s flags from his own time, North Carolina’s Queen Anne’s Revenge Project notes, is a Boston News-Letter report of June 1718: his ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, and a sloop bore down on the Protestant Caesar “with Black Flags and Deaths Heads in them”, and three more sloops came on with “Bloody Flags”. Johnson’s General History (1724) has Teach hoist “his Black Colours”. The North Carolina historian Kevin Duffus adds a deposition of November 1717 describing a “Death Head” flag on the Queen Anne’s Revenge. The horned skeleton came later: the historian E. T. Fox, cited by the Project, found it first in a 1912 article in The Mariner’s Mirror, where it had nothing to do with Blackbeard. It is flown today on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, where in 2021 the island’s county commissioner said many people sport it.

Origin and history

Most of the design is in the eighteenth-century record, on other men’s flags. Johnson describes the black ensign of the pirate Francis Spriggs, “which they called Jolly Roger”: a white skeleton with a dart in one hand striking a bleeding heart and an hourglass in the other, the same device, he says, that Edward Low carried. Bartholomew Roberts came to Whydah under a black flag showing Death with an hourglass, crossed bones, a dart and a heart dropping three drops of blood.

The modern flag starts in 1911. Ralph D. Paine’s Book of Buried Treasure gave the pirate John Quelch, tried at Boston in June 1704, a flag called “Old Roger”, with a skeleton holding an hourglass in one hand and, in the other, a dart in a heart with three drops of blood. Duffus read the whole transcript of Quelch’s trial and found no such flag in it. In 1912 The Mariner’s Mirror printed a line drawing of Quelch’s “Old Roger”. In 1933 Charles Grey’s Pirates of the Eastern Seas gave the same description to pirates executed at Boston in 1719. According to Duffus, the flag was first called Blackbeard’s in a Time-Life book of 1978 by Douglas Botting.

How the form changed

The skeleton grew horns. In the 1912 drawing, Duffus writes, it seems to wear a four-pointed crown; in 1923 the crown became a pair of horns, and the horns stayed. Fox points out that in the eighteenth century the Devil was not drawn as a skeleton and the skeleton of Death never had horns, so the figure is an odd mixture of the two. Charles Grey’s plate of pirate flags in 1933 shows the horned skeleton, its hourglass, the spear and the bleeding heart, and captions it “The original Jolly Roger”.

Disputed and modern readings

The attribution is still repeated. The Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal captioned it in 2010: “Blackbeard’s flag showed a skeleton piercing a heart and toasting the devil.” The World History Encyclopedia gives it to Blackbeard “at least according to legend”. The naval historian Benerson Little, like Duffus, holds that Blackbeard’s was a black flag with a death’s head, and calls the horned skeleton an early twentieth-century invention.

Where you’ll see it

On Ocracoke the flag is sold in the island’s shops and was part of Hyde County’s emergency services badge, which showed a skeletal devil with a sword aimed at a red heart. At their meeting of 2 August 2021 the county’s commissioners voted to replace it, after one of them objected to “a devil with a piercing heart” on emergency vehicles.

Often confused with

Roberts’s flag at Whydah had the same Death, hourglass, dart and bleeding heart, and is described in a source of the time; his jack, a man standing on two skulls, is drawn on the Bartholomew Roberts’s flag page. The plain Jolly Roger is the skull and crossbones alone.

Sources

Did You Know Blackbeard's Flag is a Modern Design?, Jeremy Borrelli, QAR Archaeologist, Queen Anne’s Revenge Project blog, 6 October 2017, Queen Anne’s Revenge Project, North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, article text
The truth about Blackbeard’s Flag, Kevin P. Duffus, Ocracoke Observer, 18 August 2021, Ocracoke Observer, article text
The Book of Buried Treasure, Ralph D. Paine, The Book of Buried Treasure (New York: Macmillan, 1911), Project Gutenberg eBook #33318, Project Gutenberg, Chapter on Captain John Quelch
A general history of the pyrates, Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, second edition (London: T. Warner, 1724), Project Gutenberg eBook #40580, Project Gutenberg, Chap. III (Teach); Chap. XIII (Low); Chap. XVI (Spriggs)
Pirates of the Eastern Seas (1618-1723), A Lurid Page of History, Charles Grey, Pirates of the Eastern Seas (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1933), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, The Black Flag, or the Jolly Roger, p. 18
The Jolly Roger & Other Pirate Flags, Mark Cartwright, World History Encyclopedia, published 18 August 2021, World History Encyclopedia, Gruesome Symbols
Blackbeard’s Pirate Flag, Smithsonian Ocean, Human Connections: History & Cultures, July 2010 (Internet Archive copy, 13 October 2025), Smithsonian Institution, caption
Hyde commissioners want ‘Blackbeard’s flag’ off the EMS logo, Connie Leinbach, Ocracoke Observer, 19 August 2021, Ocracoke Observer, article text
The Fanciful, Mythical “Calico Jack Rackham” Pirate Flag, Benerson Little, Swordplay & Swashbucklers, 18 June 2021 (quoting his book The Golden Age of Piracy: The Truth Behind Pirate Myths, 2016), Benerson Little, quoting The Golden Age of Piracy

The same shape elsewhere

Browse symbols formed from squares and rectangles.

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 14, 2026. How we research

Added October 14, 2026.

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