Last modified: 2017-04-17 by rob raeside
Keywords: libertalia | pirates | letters on flags | captain mission |
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image by Olivier Touzeau, 12 April 2017
There's no information on the flag, but in Pirates: Terror on the High Seas
from the Caribbean to the South China Sea (consulting editor David Cordingly,
Turner Publishing 1996 ISBN1570362858), Chapter 6 is on 'Libertalia: The
Pirate's Utopia'. It suggests that Libertalia was a myth (thus the flag probably
never existed) but looks at the reasons for its legend.
David Cohen, 22 June 1998
In "Raiders and Rebels: The Golden Age of Piracy", by Frank Sherry, ISBN:0688046843, it is asserted that it existed. Sherry even describes the flag, as shown in my drawing. He claims that Captain Misson was, perhaps, a myth, but that Libertatia did exist.
Sherry claims that this was, in a perverse way, the first democracy. He quotes "articles" by which the pirates lived. They are strangely egalitarian.
By the way, Sherry discusses pirate flags...that they were red, and rarely black. He illustrates several, some with chevrons.
Are there any other sources available?
Edward Mooney, Jr., 21 June 1998
There are, but I doubt how reliable they are. Children's' books especially conflict greatly on what pirate used what flag and what it looked like. This is also true of some books for adult readership. I have a Wordsworth Reference book (which I can't put my hands on at the moment) which is a reprint of an old account of pirates which has flag info - but the information conflicts with what's in the standard encyclopedias etc. My favourite quote on pirate flags comes from Flags at Sea by Timothy Wilson (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich - HMSO, London) ISBN 0112903894:
'The few fragments of authentic information about the flags used by pirates in the Golden Age of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries tend to get lost in the romantic image of the ubiquitous 'Jolly Roger'. Very often it must have suited pirates not to be recognised as such and they no doubt made much use of false colours to gain surprise...'
He goes on to mention a couple of reported pirate flags - that of Bartholomew
Roberts and the Barbary corsairs.
David Cohen, 22 June 1998
Libertalia was supposedly begun by Captain Misson. Misson appears in Defoe's
General History of the Pyrates: Volume II. Misson was a fiction character
invented by Defoe to attack the social standards of the time, including religion
and greed. Misson began a war against all nations, demanding a freedom from what
he sees as the evil lawmakers who wanted to oppress those they were in charge
of. Libertalia was the utopian settlement Misson began, running it in the
fashion of his beliefs, that all man were equal, there should be no slaves, no
revenge, no unnecessary violence, no greed, no oppression by money, power or
religion. Hence the flag, For God and Freedom...
Nathaniel Buchanan, 13 September 1999
from the book "L'Etat c'est moi" by Bruno Fuligni:
Conclusion :
Jan Rogozinski, in Pirates! (1995), reprinted as 'The Wordsworth Dictionary
of Pirates', 1997, calls this story entirely fictitious. And I guess he's right
- the punch-line being the flag! A pirate going into battle with a white flag?
Jarig Bakker, 12 December 2000
As stated above, according to Bruno Fuligni in
L'Etat c'est moi, quoting Hubert Deschamps, they wanted to adopt a white
flag, adorned with an allegory of Freedom, and the motto "A Deo libertate".
NB : Hubert Deschamps (1900-1979), historian, is the author of /Les pirates
à Madagascar aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles/, Paris, ed. Berger-Levrault, 1949, 244
p.
Giving credit to this only description, even if it is obviously hard
to be accurate with the drawing of the supposed flag of an entity which has
probably never existed, the drawing we show currently should be replaced since
it has the motto in French and besides in Comic Sans MS font, which of course
was not in use in the XVIIth century ;)
I made the drawing for the book by
Bruno Fuligni /Royaumes d'aventure/, bearing the motto in Latin in a
hand-written style font, and the allegory of Freedom (I drew it after a
representation of Freedom from the XVIIth century).
Olivier Touzeau,
12 April 2017