A late appearance of the bloody flag

[Daniel]

The second most famous pirate flag, after the skull and crossbones, is the bloody flag or pavillon nomme sansquartier. It's well known that it was used by pirates and privateers, but we don't normally associate it with colliers.

Well, I stumbled across the bloody flag in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey (indispensable for any GAoP researcher). In 1768, some collier captains who were sick of waiting for London's dockside coal-heavers to unload their ships ordered their sailors to take the coal ashore themselves. The coal-heavers, who saw their bread and butter being taken away, took rather unkindly to this, and threatened to murder the sailors.

At least one of the collier captains responded by hoisting a red "bloody flag" to his masthead, ostensibly as a signal for the sailors to gather and resist the coal-heavers. The sailors referred to it as the "flag of defiance" as well as the "bloody flag."

For all their fearsome flag, things didn't go very well for the sailors, who were unarmed in the face of the coal-heavers' cutlasses. The coal-heavers tricked some of the sailors ashore, murdered one, and beat several of the others black and blue.

[William Brand]

That's a nice little tidbit, Daniel. Thanks for the additional reference on bloody flags. I seldom have the time to do half of the research I want to do.