Why the Jolly Roger? Commentary by Captain Paul Watson A few people ask why the Jolly Roger? Is the pirate image really the image we want to project? The origin of this logo goes back almost two decades. Because of our interventionist approach, our detractors, primarily poachers and outlaw whalers began calling us pirates. As a former student of Aikido I have always believed that the best way to deal with criticism is to take it, use it and toss it back. If they wanted to call us pirates well, argh, we would be pirates. Why not? So I asked Geert Vons of Sea Shepherd Netherlands to create a new logo. Geert is a tattoo artist and thus the perfect pick to design a unique Jolly Roger logo. Every pirate in history had their own Jolly Roger. And why is it called a Jolly Roger? The reason being is that the first flags were red and black, not black and white. A black skull or skeleton with crossed swords or bones underneath. It was French in origin and was called the Joli Rouge by the corsairs meaning the “pretty red”. This became Anglicized to Jolly Roger. So I took the skull to represent the toxicity of human greed upon a black background representing the oblivion of extinction. Under the skull I placed a shepherd’s crook representing our objective of protecting life in the ocean. The crossed crook with trident represents that we are not passive, but rather aggressive. The trident crossed with the crook symbolizes that ours is an aggressive non-violence. In the forehead of the skull we placed a dolphin and a whale in a yin and yang position to illustrate harmony and balance. The whale and the dolphin represent the most intelligent life forms in the ocean and placed upon the human skull represent that there is much that humanity can learn from cetaceans. The public reaction to the logo has been amazing. Kids love it and it is a symbol that has come to represent our movement to defend life in the sea and to underscore our official motto: “If the Ocean dies, we die.” Pirates have a romantic image and history has tales of courageous and independent pirates. Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Walter Raleigh were regarded as pirates by the Spanish although they, like many other pirates, were merely taking gold and silver that the Spanish had stolen from the Aztec, Maya’s and Incas. The British Navy was very inefficient at stopping piracy because so many politicians, bureaucrats, and officers in the Royal Navy were on the take. The man who did more than any other to shut down piracy in the Caribbean was the pirate Henry Morgan, a deed for which he was knighted and given the governorship of Jamaica which is when he became a true crook. The fact is that pirates get things done, where bureaucrats and politicians fail. The British regarded Captain John Paul Jones, the founder of the American Navy as a pirate. The pirate Jean LaFitte stood with Andrew Jackson against the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Another little known fact is that the pirates tended to be more democratic and more humane than the ships of the British, American or European Navies. Pirate captains were elected based upon merit and the ships were run as true democracies. They also tended to be more tolerant and less racist than the navies and certainly more egalitarian and what they took was divided amongst all of the crew based on courage, skill and seniority instead of class and privledge. Pirates were free men and women, long before the American and French revolution. Blackbeard for example loved to attack slavers and once taken, he would free the slaves and give them an opportunity to join his crew, and if they chose not to do so, he placed them on shore. Up to 40% of Blackbeard’s crew were slaves he had freed and these former slaves could rise in the ranks on equal terms with white crewmembers. This kind of egalitarianism was extremely radical for the times. Women also rose through the ranks based on merit as demonstrated by pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Read. There is no authenticated example of anyone every being forced to walk a plank, and floggings simply did not take place on ships where crew and officers were of the same class and designated only by skill for their positions. Treasure Island and other fictional books gave piracy a bad name and of course it was in the interest of the establishment to give the pirates a bad name. After all, the establishment controlled the media then, as now, and it simply would not do to have upstarts of the lower classes stealing the money that they themselves had stolen. Thus I have no problem with being called a pirate. Many years ago I was awarded an official badge of piracy by the Boy Scouts of Tibury in the United Kingdom where Captain Kidd was executed by being hung in chains at low tide on the Thames. Because of the history of the area, the Boy Scouts were allowed to adopt the Jolly Roger. I had given a presentation to the Scout Troop and they honoured me with the badge. Our own Jolly Roger now flies from our ships in all the world’s oceans and can be seen on hoodies, shirts, hats and other objects everywhere in the world. I have come across people wearing our logo on the streets of Paris, in the desert of Nambia, on the shores of remote islands in the South Pacific. We have taken our flag to the furthest point possible on the planet in the Ross Sea and to the far north above the Arctic Circle. We have flown it from official poles in France and Australia, over the doorway of City Hall in Fremantle and on stage with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Xavier Rudd, Boston, Aerosmith, Gojira, the Architects and so many other bands. Our logo has appeared on products by Lush, by Quicksilver, on Skateboards, surf boards, water bottles, on Board Shorts in partnership with Kelly Slater and it has been shown in movies and on television around the world. Some people say it’s intimidating but usually they are the people we are trying to intimidate. Some people have said it’s offensive but that okay because we like to offend. However a great many people like pirates, be they in history books, novels or in the movies and we are the good pirates of conservation in pursuit of the pirates of greed and destruction. We don’t have cannons. Instead we have a more powerful weapon and that is the camera. We don’t cause injury or kill people. Instead we save lives. And yes we steal, we steal the lives of the creatures we love and respect from the harpoons, guns, clubs, nets and hooks of those who would kill them. We are passionate pirates of compassion and we serve our clients – the wondrous community of living creatures from smallest of plankton to the great whales that live in our mother ocean. So we like our logo and our flag and although some people may take offense at the fact that our logo is plainly a Jolly Roger, we can proudly say, “Yes it is, and we like it that way.”
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 00:27:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015