It's the year 1715. At sea. Somewhere near the Bahamas.
Out from the waves, a vessel appears. It hoists a black flag, with an insignia of a white skull above two crossed bones.
Pirates.
For a long time, pirate expert Peter Leeson thought this situation — pirates flying the flag known as the Jolly Roger — was a myth.
"When I started studying pirates … I was absolutely certain it was going to be part of pirate lore," he tells ABC RN's An Object in Time.
"[It looked] more like it should be in a movie, than having been actually used by historical pirates."
Leeson, a professor of economics and law at George Mason University, who's written a book titled The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, soon realised he was wrong.
The Jolly Roger was very real. It struck fear in sailors for decades and helped to define one of the world's most intriguing criminal enterprises.
The golden age of piracy
From the 1650s until the 1730s, the cutlass-wielding, rum-drinking pirates we know from film and television were indeed roaming around the Caribbean, and then further afield.
The era was known as the 'golden age of piracy'.
"[The Caribbean] was relatively lawless. It was far from Europe, so it took a lot of effort for the various European countries to enforce any kind of law and order," David Head, a history professor at Orlando's University of Central Florida, says.
Head says, with European colonies in the area, "there were also valuables worth taking … the gold and silver that came out of the Spanish mines, for example".
But it wasn't just precious metals that pirates had their eyes on.
"There were various other colonial products that were coming out of the Caribbean — sugar and tobacco and things like that," Head says.
"My favourite thing that pirates would steal was a red dye called cochineal that comes from a bug from Oaxaca, Mexico. It produces a brilliant red dye that was highly valuable."
And pirates liked to be instantly recognisable.
Black and red flags
In the 17th century, pirate vessels would hoist flags — but not always the ones we now associate with pirates.
"A red flag meant they would offer no quarter or no mercy. They're going to fight to the death. Whereas a black flag indicated that they would offer quarter, meaning that they would negotiate when needed," Dr Rebecca Simon, a historian of that era, says.
It may have been this use of red that led to the name Jolly Roger.
"[Some experts] think that maybe Roger came from 'rouge', the French word for red, which makes sense because that would also be from the buccaneering period, where it was mostly French pirates … So 'joli rouge' [meaning pretty red]," Simon says.
"There are also some people who say that Roger was a term for 'the devil at sea'."
The pirate flags would sometimes feature a skull and crossbones.
"This was actually a symbol that had been used since the Middle Ages, basically to symbolise death. And it was often used in maritime logbooks, next to a name of someone who had died," Simon says.
As the years went on, pirates got more creative — meaning there was not one Jolly Roger but all sorts of variations for each vessel.
Skeletons, hearts and hourglasses
By the 18th century, the red flag was not as popular, Simon says. Instead, pirates stuck to black flags with different insignias.
"Different crews … would riff on the theme, sometimes with full skeleton bodies, sometimes skeletons engaged in activities like holding a sword or a flame," Leeson says.
"There were hearts that were stabbed with little blood drops falling out. Occasionally hourglasses were shown to indicate to the merchant ships that pirates were attacking and the time was running out."
For example, Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts sometimes "used a flag that had his own self-portrait on it with a bleeding heart, so he could symbolise himself as this all-powerful pirate", Simon says.
The crew was responsible for making their ship's flags.
"Pirates, being sailors, would have been fairly skilled at sewing, because you had to do your own sewing on the ship … repairing clothes, repairing sails," Head says.
"They would have been capable of [making] these elaborate designs."
'They were business people'
So why did pirates go to all the effort of making Jolly Roger flags?
Leeson explains that pirate vessels would carry all sorts of flags, including "false flags".
"When they were hunting their prey, which were merchant ships, typically … [they would fly] false flags of different national governments," he says.
"Pirates would get as reasonably close as they could … once they got in close enough, it was time to actually communicate to their prey that they were in fact a piratical vessel. At that time, the Jolly Roger would go up."
This wasn't just pirate theatrics — it was a cunning business plan at work.
A vessel suitably scared by a terrifying black flag might not fight back.
"Pirates were very keen on trying to reduce the cost of their piratical enterprise as much as possible. Because at the end of the day … they were business people," Leeson says.
"Criminal business people, but they were business people nonetheless."
Leeson says pirates often wanted to avoid "a violent melee with the ships that they attacked" in order to keep their costs down.
"Pirates wanted to take their prey as peacefully as possible," he says.
"So pirates adopted a policy where they promised that any merchant ships who peacefully acquiesced to them … [the crew] would live."
The other option: "They would basically kill everyone who resisted them".
'Very media savvy'
Terrifying merchant ships into submission only works if you have a suitably ominous reputation.
So when pirates did attack and plunder a ship, they would always make sure there were one or two survivors.
"[The survivors] would go back and tell the tale of what happens when you resist pirates and how fearsome this particular crew was and describe the flag in detail," Leeson says.
Pirates didn't want their exploits known only on the docks and in the occasional bar.
"Pirates were very media savvy … [Survivors] would also tell the tale to journalists and journalists would then dutifully report the fearsome experience that these merchant sailors described," Leeson says.
"Pirates were aware that this stuff was being reported in the newspaper … So they cultivated a particular public image."
Pirate democracy
Despite being among the most famous outlaws of all time, pirates operated according to a defined set of rules.
Simon says crew members had "a democratic say in terms of how things were run".
"Everyone had to put in a vote to make any major decisions. Pirate crews also made councils in order to determine what sort of appropriate punishments could be doled out. And no punishment could be done unless it had a unanimous vote."
Simon also says if a captain wasn't doing a good job, they could be voted out, usually to be replaced with the second-in-command.
And crucially, pirates got equal shares in the spoils.
"This kept people pretty happy, because they knew that they would always get the money they were owed [and] nothing would get withheld," Simon says.
Pirates even had an early system of workers compensation, with the crew maintaining a central fund to help injured pirates.
Leeson says pirates would "first pull aside the amount [from the spoils] that was required to make insurance payments to pirates who had been injured in the line of work".
The end of the 'golden age'
By the 1720s, things were starting to change.
"There's a few factors that end the golden age of piracy," Simon says.
"Britain had started conducting what became known as a 'war on piracy' at the turn of the 18th century … [Then] Britain really ramps up its campaign."
Also, as the political map of the region changed, "we started to have a lot of governors in the Caribbean, in North America who were really being forced … to really fight against pirates".
"Then the British government starts offering pardons to a lot of pirates in order to get them to stop pirating."
These factors meant that "it was just not very lucrative to be a pirate anymore".
By the 1730s, many pirates had taken a pardon and become "privateers", which meant they were employed by various European governments to supplement their navies.
Then regular navies became more sizeable and more powerful, putting an end to the privateers.
"The state [started to] have the monopoly on violence, on force, taking it out of the hands of private actors," Head says.
As the 18th century progressed, the seas largely transformed from lawlessness to order — signalling the end of the once fearsome Jolly Roger.
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