Calico Jack’s flag
A black flag with a white skull above two crossed cutlasses, sold today as the flag of the pirate John Rackham, “Calico Jack”, condemned in Jamaica in 1720. No record of his time describes a black flag of his; the design first appears in a German book of 1959.
Meaning
The flag is a twentieth-century invention, in the words of the naval historian Benerson Little, and quite probably the pirate flag most often shown in films. There is no record of any pirate flag that Rackham flew. No witness at his trial in Jamaica in November 1720 mentioned a black flag. The only flag on record, Little notes, is a white one, which he reads as a French flag shown to deceive; men tried with Rackham’s crew said they had gone turtling and saw his sloop coming “with a white Pendant”. Even the nickname “Calico Jack” appears nowhere but in Johnson’s General History, Little points out. The design is the Jolly Roger with crossed swords in place of the bones.
Origin and history
Rackham’s piracy was small. He commanded a 12-ton sloop, the William, stolen at anchor at New Providence, and his cruise lasted less than two months, robbing fishing boats and small trading vessels off New Providence, Hispaniola and Jamaica, Little writes. He and his crew were condemned for piracy at St Jago de la Vega in Jamaica on 16 and 17 November 1720. Two of that crew, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, were tried there on 28 November. Without them, in Little’s view, Rackham would be forgotten.
The flag came two centuries later. Little traces the familiar pirate flags to a plate in Basil Lubbock’s The Blackwall Frigates (1922), copied into later books, among them Charles Grey’s Pirates of the Eastern Seas and Patrick Pringle’s Jolly Roger; Rackham’s flag is not among them. It first appears in Hans Leip’s Bordbuch des Satans (1959), which added three imaginary flags, Rackham’s among them. American Heritage’s Pirates of the Spanish Main (1961) copied most of Leip’s flags exactly, and became a classic source of pirate lore for, in Little’s words, “literally thousands of young readers”.
Where the crossed swords came from
Little’s best guess is the 1935 film of Captain Blood, whose pirate flag has two arms, each holding a cutlass, crossed beneath a skull. If the idea has an eighteenth-century root, he suggests, it is Daniel Defoe’s novel Captain Singleton (1720), whose pirates hoist “a black flag, with two cross daggers in it”. Singleton is a novel, though, and Little remains convinced the film is the likelier origin.
Disputed and modern readings
The attribution survives in reference works: the World History Encyclopedia wrote in 2021 that Rackham “famously sported” the skull and crossed cutlasses. A newer story, which Little met on a history forum online, makes the two swords stand for Anne Bonny and Mary Read. He calls it a ridiculous notion; the flag itself was drawn in 1959.
Often confused with
The Jolly Roger has crossed bones under the skull, not swords.
Read next
- Next in Historical flagsBartholomew Roberts’s flagThe jack of the Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts (killed 1722): a black flag showing Roberts himself holding a flaming sword, standing on two skulls marked ABH and AMH, for “a Barbadian’s and a Martinican’s Head”.
- The same shape in Celtic symbolsSt Brigid’s crossA small cross woven from rushes or straw on the eve of St Brigid’s Day, 1 February, and hung over the door or in the roof for the saint’s blessing and protection through the year. The four-armed form is the best known, but Irish crosses come in many shapes.
See also
Jolly Roger, Blackbeard’s flag, Emanuel Wynne’s flag, Vexillum, Aquila, SPQR.
Sources
- 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, article text, quoting The Golden Age of Piracy
- The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates, The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica: Robert Baldwin, 1721), digitised by the National Library of Jamaica, Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, title page; evidence of John Eaton and others
- The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, Daniel Defoe, Captain Singleton (1720), Project Gutenberg eBook #6422, Project Gutenberg, the attack on three English East India ships off Ceylon
- The Jolly Roger & Other Pirate Flags, Mark Cartwright, World History Encyclopedia, published 18 August 2021, World History Encyclopedia, Gruesome Symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from crosses or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 14, 2026. How we research
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