Jolly Roger
The black flag of the pirates of the early 1700s. The name now means one design, a white skull above two crossed bones on black, which pirates hoisted to make a ship surrender without a fight.
Meaning
In its own time “Jolly Roger” was the pirates’ name for their black flag, whatever was painted on it. Captain Charles Johnson’s General History of the Pyrates (1724) calls it “the Name they give their black Flag” when Bartholomew Roberts’s crew hoisted theirs, and uses it again for Francis Spriggs’s flag of a white skeleton. The name has since come to mean a single design, as the World History Encyclopedia puts it: a white human skull set above two crossed bones on a black ground. Johnson gives one plain version of it, the black ensign that the pirate Worley made “with a white Death’s Head in the Middle of it”. The oldest flag of the kind in the record is Emanuel Wynne’s, reported by a Royal Navy captain in 1700. Its users today include the Royal Navy’s submarine service, which, the National Museum of the Royal Navy records, has flown Jolly Rogers since the First World War.
Origin and history
The black flag was a late arrival. Charles Grey, writing in 1933, found it in use only in the last two decades of the age of piracy, from 1700 to 1722, and even then not everywhere: earlier pirates fought under their national colours, with a red flag added to say that no quarter would be given. Red flags went on alongside the black. North Carolina’s Queen Anne’s Revenge Project, named for Blackbeard’s flagship, notes that pirates used the two interchangeably, and the National Museum of the Royal Navy goes further: it holds that the original pirate flags were blood red, not black and white.
The Project’s archaeologist Jeremy Borrelli traces the skeleton (the “King of Death”), the death’s head, the crossed bones, the hourglass and the dart to Christian imagery common on gravestones, all of it about mortality and time running out. The National Museum of the Royal Navy gives another source for the skull and bones: the mark written in ships’ logs to record a death on board. Johnson describes several captains’ own designs, among them Bartholomew Roberts’s. Grey thought the elaborate ones were beyond the skill of an ordinary sailmaker, which is why the flags came down in the end to the simple skull and crossbones.
What does the Jolly Roger mean?
It was a demand to surrender, with a threat attached. Captain Richard Hawkins, attacked by pirates and writing in 1724, recorded that they hung out a black ensign “having an Emblem of Mortality upon it, which they called their ‘Jolly Roger’”: under it they gave quarter if there was no resistance, and if there was, they put out their red or bloody flag, which meant no quarter for anyone. Borrelli reads the flags the same way: the pirates expected their victims to see the symbols of death and surrender at once.
Why is it called the Jolly Roger?
Nobody knows for certain, and the World History Encyclopedia says so before listing the guesses. “Roger” was a name for the Devil, “Old Roger”, and also a word for a wandering beggar. The French “joli rouge”, pretty red, may have been the privateers’ red flag; it is the explanation the National Museum of the Royal Navy gave for its 2019 exhibition. The Encyclopedia offers one more: that the French gave Bartholomew Roberts the same nickname for the bright red silks he wore in battle. Charles Grey thought it simpler: anyone used to anatomy lectures knows the grim nicknames given to skulls, and the grin of a skull suggests “Jolly Roger” on its own.
Where you’ll see it
The Royal Navy’s submarines have flown the Jolly Roger since the First World War, after a critic likened their crews to pirates. Each boat added a symbol for each action, painted or sewn onto the black cloth. The National Museum of the Royal Navy showed these flags in its 2019 exhibition Jolly Roger: A Symbol of Terror and Pride, beside a pirate flag that Admiral Richard Curry captured in a battle off the North African coast in the 1790s. In fiction the flag flies over the pirate ships of R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island (1858) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1881–83), and it has been in pirate films since the silent era.
Often confused with
The skull and crossed bones the pirates borrowed was already a Christian reminder of death on gravestones, as Borrelli notes; its Christian history is on the skull and crossbones page in Christian symbols. On chemical labels the skull and crossbones is the pictogram for acute toxicity, GHS06. Among pirate flags, Wynne’s adds an hourglass, and the flag sold as Calico Jack’s has crossed cutlasses where the bones should be.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comSkull and crossbones (GHS06)The skull and crossbones on chemical labels today: the GHS pictogram for acute toxicity.Read next
- Next in Historical flagsBlackbeard’s flagA 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.
- 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
Emanuel Wynne’s flag, Calico Jack’s flag, Skull and crossbones, Bartholomew Roberts’s flag, Vexillum, Aquila.
Sources
- 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. IX (Roberts); Chap. XI (Worley); Chap. XVI (Spriggs)
- The Jolly Roger & Other Pirate Flags, Mark Cartwright, World History Encyclopedia, published 18 August 2021, World History Encyclopedia, The Jolly Roger
- 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, pp. 17–19
- 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
- New Exhibition Jolly Roger: A Symbol of Terror and Pride Uncovers Fascinating History of the Jolly Roger, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard news, published 14 March 2019 (Internet Archive copy, 19 January 2025), National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, article text
- WHMIS - Pictograms (OSH Answers), Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, Skull and Crossbones
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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