The Challenge: Shiver Me Timbers!
The skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger is an instantly recognizable symbol; it calls to mind scenes of cutlass-wielding buccaneers buckling swash on the salt-scoured decks of their sailing ships. However, the centuries have not been kind to this icon of piracy. It has been modified, parodied, and been generally overused. It's played out.
Your challenge is to create a different Jolly Roger, a flag that a ship can fly to identify itself as a pirate vessel. The pirates in question do not necessarily have to be Caribbean buccaneers of the 17th-18th century; as examples, ancient trireme-based pirates, Chinese pirates, Barbary pirates, and even space pirates are okay, so long as they have a distinct "pirate culture" surrounding them. And no internet pirate jokes.
Of course, all real-world designs are off-limits (such as these ones). Be wild, be creative, and don't catch scurvy!
The Entrants
Poll Closes on Monday, February 20th
The skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger is an instantly recognizable symbol; it calls to mind scenes of cutlass-wielding buccaneers buckling swash on the salt-scoured decks of their sailing ships. However, the centuries have not been kind to this icon of piracy. It has been modified, parodied, and been generally overused. It's played out.
Your challenge is to create a different Jolly Roger, a flag that a ship can fly to identify itself as a pirate vessel. The pirates in question do not necessarily have to be Caribbean buccaneers of the 17th-18th century; as examples, ancient trireme-based pirates, Chinese pirates, Barbary pirates, and even space pirates are okay, so long as they have a distinct "pirate culture" surrounding them. And no internet pirate jokes.
Of course, all real-world designs are off-limits (such as these ones). Be wild, be creative, and don't catch scurvy!
The Entrants
Gunther's Sea Rats
"Gunther and his band of lowlifes were once the terror of the skies of Europe and beyond, swooping out of nowhere on their stolen Hanseatic Aircogs to terrorize Hanseatic merchants from Visby to Calcutta. Their symbol, a white seagull carrying a cross, was instantly recognizable to more or less everyone in the business.
No-one shed a tear the day when Gunther's fleet crashed down into the Alps attempting to escape the Lübeck Arcanist Fleet. While their bodies were never found, they would never again soar above the clouds either."
Diederik Jacobus Smit
The so-called "Engflag" (or "Engflagge" in German; "Engvlag" in Dutch) of the Dutch pirate and privateer Diederik Jacobus Smit, who was active from 1709 to 1722 in the Caribbean Sea for the English, became the main inspiration for later pirate flags. The red-white colour scheme was inspired by the Hanseatic flags (e.g. Hamburg, Bremen and Luebeck), sabers and the steering wheel became associated with piracy just like hidden treasures and excessive drinking. Later Engflags also featured other weapons, skulls, bones and coins to add variety and sometimes added black or blue elements, but the red and white remained crucial, just like the steering wheel.
Jacques de Puisseguin
Flag of the legendary French buccaneer Jacques de Puisseguin, who boasted that he had taken enough treasure on the Spanish Main to have silver cannons that fired doubloons as scattershot. He (and indeed his flag) was known as "Piss-Gun Jack" to his English-speaking victims, both as a play on words, and for reasons that may become more obvious on reflection.
The Witchblade
The Witchblade is a Razee used by the Masane Clan (a "sea ninja" clan in Okinawa), who are serving for the British Royal Navy (the Masane Clan has secretly been converted to Anglicanism). Their primary tasks are, first, to sabotage the Galleon Trade and second, to massacre Catholic missionaries en route for Formosa and Japan, tasks the crew of Witchblade is more than willing to do the tasks given to them.
In response to this scourge, Spain has sent two ships against her, first, the 2nd-rate Reina of the Spanish Navy. And second and the more threatening, the Razee (once a 1st-rate before Razeeing) Virgen Maria, composed of fanatic Catholics, and even friars, bent on avenging the deaths of the missionaries the killed.
The Flag of the Witchblade is resembles the Imperial Japanese Flag but put with the Skull of a ninja in the sun and a black background to symbolize a stormy sky.
The Egyptian Corsairs
The Great Crusade in the late 11th century was initially a rousing success for Christian Europe, securing much of the Holy Land and causing the formation of a number of new Christian states. However, it caused a great deal of consternation among their newly-conquered Muslim subjects. Displaced Muslim fishermen and sailors began to fight back against their conquerors, capturing Christian ships and sailing them away to ports in Egypt. However, they did not simply stop at the capture of these vessels; they began to actively harry shipping lanes between Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and Outremer.
While the Fatimid authorities did not openly condone these attacks on transport vessels and merchants, they were more than happy to turn a blind eye. Operating out of the ancient port of Alexandria, the so-called Egyptian Corsairs became a significant thorn in the side of local Christian nations. Crucial supplies for the armies of the Crusader kingdoms regularly fell into the hands of the corsairs, and ships transporting large numbers of soldiers were often sunk.
The ravages of the corsairs reached a peak during the 1170s when, in a massive raid, they sacked and then burned the Christian port of Corfu on the Greek coast. Ultimately, their efforts caused the Christians to abandon the Holy Land centuries earlier than otherwise would have been the case. Eventually, as the supply of Christian ships to raid dried up, the corsair fleets began to disband. Most ship captains joined the regular navies of Muslim nations, but others continued to raid on their own. These renegades were often erratic, and indiscriminately attacked both Christian and Muslims ships. Efforts were made by the Muslim nations to bring the corsairs to justice.
Though the remaining corsairs fought fiercely, they were driven out of Egypt for good by the aging Ayyubid leader Saladin in 1194. The survivors fled to Tunisia, where they were briefly a nuisance, before they were wiped out entirely.
Below is the flag design most commonly used by vessels of the Corsair fleets: a gloved hand on a blue field holding an unsheathed dagger, inside of a white border. Captains of individual ships usually modified the design slightly by adding Quranic quotations, but the overall look remained relatively consistent.
Sons of Liberty
Extract from a Boys Guide to the British Imperium, 1964, Prince Frederick Memorial Press:
...with the Boston Rebellion of 1774 crushed many of the smuggler instigators turned to piracy. The most famous of these called themselves the Sons of Liberty and preyed on North American Ships until the Royal Navy....
... their common banner was the Snake & Stars. Often on a blue background the depiction of the snake and number of stars varied but the most common is shown here...
Vikings
Here is my entry, the rough idea behind it is to have a Viking Settlement somewhere (possibly the Azores or Canary Islands) that is too small to pillage coastal towns but has enough manpower to survive by raiding ships traversing west Africa and Europe.
The Red Devil
Tomos "Red Devil" Rhys was one of the most infamous of the Murray River Marrauders, water-borne bushranger-type who bailled up passengers ships on the Murray-darling Waterway of mainland Australasia.
The Red Devil commanded a number of fast steam-powered skiffs which would swarms slowere moving paddle boats and then board them, overpower the crew and rob the passengers before steaming away with their loot.
Like other Marauders, a certain amount of bravado guided the Red Devil's actions and he and his crew could sometime be seen along the Murray in broad daulight with their ensign unfurled, daring the authorities to come after them.
The skiffs under the Red Devil's command flew various ensigns, all red but only his personnal one showed black horns and eyes under black stormy clouds.
Following his capture, his ensign was displayed at various places before being given to the permanent collection of the Murray Riverine Provincial Museum.
Poll Closes on Monday, February 20th
