en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolly_Roger
2 corrections found
During the 17th and 18th centuries, British privateers were required to fly a specific flag, the 1606 Union Jack with a white crest in the middle, to distinguish them from Royal Navy vessels.
This misidentifies the privateer flag. British privateers were not required to use a Union Jack with a white crest in the middle; authorities instead prescribed a red jack/ensign with the Union in the canton, while the white-escutcheon Union Jack was used for other commissioned vessels.
Full reasoning
The claim conflates different British maritime flags.
Authoritative maritime-history sources do not say 17th- and 18th-century British privateers were required to fly the 1606 Union Jack with a white badge/escutcheon in the center.
Instead:
- The National Maritime Museum explains that privateers were required to fly a red flag with a Union Jack in canton to distinguish themselves from the Royal Navy.
- W. G. Perrin's British Flags states that a special distinguishing flag for privateers was provided by royal proclamation in 1694: a red jack with the Union Jack in the canton. Perrin also separately notes that the Union Jack with a white escutcheon in the centre was created for ships commissioned by colonial governors, not as the standard privateer flag.
So the article's sentence is wrong in two ways:
- it gives the wrong flag design for privateers, and
- it assigns to privateers a flag variant that historical sources describe for a different category of vessels.
2 sources
- Pirate flags decoded | National Maritime Museum Greenwich
"English privateers were individuals commissioned by the monarch to capture and raid enemy ships. Before the 16th century, privateers were required to fly a red flag with a Union Jack 'in canton' to distinguish themselves from the Royal Navy."
- British Flags: Their Early History, and Their Development at Sea, by W. G. Perrin
"A special distinguishing flag for privateers was first provided in the Royal Proclamation issued in July, 1694... 'a Red Jack with the Union Jack described in a Canton of the upper corner thereof next the staff'"; and later, "another variant of the Union Jack had been created for the use of ships commissioned by the Governors of the North American Colonies."
Before 1700, pirates flew a plain black flag together with the red ("bloody") flag, the use of emblems first taking the scene in the 18th century.
This is too categorical: emblem-bearing pirate flags were already in use in the late 17th century, not only in the 18th century.
Full reasoning
The sentence says pirate emblems only began appearing in the 18th century. That overstates the case and conflicts with standard maritime-history accounts.
Royal Museums Greenwich states that pirate flags were mainly plain red or black until the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when pirates began adopting distinct designs. In other words, the change was already underway before 1700, not only after it.
That makes the article's wording misleading because it turns a gradual late-17th-/early-18th-century transition into a hard cutoff at 1700.
2 sources
- Pirate flags decoded | National Maritime Museum Greenwich
"Pirate flags were mainly plain red or black until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when several pirates of the 'golden age' ... adopted their own distinct designs."
- Pirate myths debunked | National Maritime Museum
"In the late 17th and early 18th centuries several pirates of the 'golden age' adopted their own distinct designs, usually a white or red motif on a black background."