quarter: the attacking ship would take no prisoners, so to avoid a slaughter the defending ship had best surrender without a fight. Pirates favoured the black flag, as often this is what would happen; even when outnumbered, enemy ships would surrender to avoid a massacre.
Over time, pirates began to decorate their black flags with personal symbolism in a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century example of ‘pimping’ something up: Thomas Tew’s black flag showed an arm holding a dagger; Edward Teach, the infamous Blackbeard, flew a black flag featuring a skeleton stabbing a heart with an arrow; Bartholomew Roberts, Black Bart, had himself on his flag, holding one side of an hourglass with Death holding the other side. (This was followed by an even more flamboyant flag of himself holding a dagger and a flaming sword, with each foot on a skull). Calico Jack, John Rackam, flew a skull crossed with swords underneath while Henry Every flew a skull in profile with crossed bones beneath; not quite the symbol on the Deptford church. Edward English, born in Ireland, did fly the skull and crossbones, but there are few records of his early life and it is not known whether he visited Deptford.
The skull and crossbones itself is an old symbol that had already graced Spanish graveyards by the time St Nicholas was built. The earliest mention of pirates raising the skull and crossbones comes from a logbook entry dated 6 December 1687. It reads: ‘And we put down our white flag, and raised a red flag with a Skull head on it and two crossed bones (all in white and in the middle of the flag), and then we marched on.’ There may be a possibility that a pirate, when designing his own flag, thought of St Nicholas in Deptford and copied the design. That pirate did not do it so well, though. As the church’s website points out, the skulls wear a laurel-wreath on their heads, probably to signify the victory over death over transient flesh. This wreath has not made it on to any pirate flags. It is still a story loved in Deptford, though. A local pub, the Bird’s Nest, has even nicknamed itself the ‘pirate pub’ due to the Jolly Roger legend.
The London Stone
History can be hidden in plain sight in the dustiest and busiest locations. Opposite Cannon Street station, set behind a metal grid in front of a branch of WHSmith sits the London Stone. The stone was the centre of a story in 2012 that named it as essential to the survival of London itself. It had been in its approximate location for a millennia or two, but the redevelopment of Cannon Street meant that property company Minerva wanted to move the stone, so that they could demolish the 1960s office block it occupies. The plan was to place it in the corner of its gleaming new Walbrook building on the corner of Cannon Street and Walbook. ‘The new dedicated setting will enhance the significance of the asset,’ Minerva wrote in 2011, ‘and better reveal its significance for current and future generations.’ Minerva did not, however, count on newspapers reporting the story with fears that moving the stone would be disaster to London. The Evening Standard , along with other papers, discovered an ancient saying that read: ‘So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long will London flourish.’
The London Stone is oolitic limestone and no one knows why it is there or what its original purpose was. It may have been part of a monument in front of the palace of a provincial Roman governor, which lay where Cannon Street is now. It may be a Saxon milestone of some sort: its original location is also the centre of Saxon London when it was re-established by King Alfred in AD 886. The stone has had its name since the twelfth century; an address recorded in a document dated between 1098 and 1108 is ‘Eadwaker aet lundene stane’. In his 1598 Survey of London , Stow writes of ‘a great stone called London Stone, fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with iron bars.’ It is thought that it was
Over time, pirates began to decorate their black flags with personal symbolism in a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century example of ‘pimping’ something up: Thomas Tew’s black flag showed an arm holding a dagger; Edward Teach, the infamous Blackbeard, flew a black flag featuring a skeleton stabbing a heart with an arrow; Bartholomew Roberts, Black Bart, had himself on his flag, holding one side of an hourglass with Death holding the other side. (This was followed by an even more flamboyant flag of himself holding a dagger and a flaming sword, with each foot on a skull). Calico Jack, John Rackam, flew a skull crossed with swords underneath while Henry Every flew a skull in profile with crossed bones beneath; not quite the symbol on the Deptford church. Edward English, born in Ireland, did fly the skull and crossbones, but there are few records of his early life and it is not known whether he visited Deptford.
The skull and crossbones itself is an old symbol that had already graced Spanish graveyards by the time St Nicholas was built. The earliest mention of pirates raising the skull and crossbones comes from a logbook entry dated 6 December 1687. It reads: ‘And we put down our white flag, and raised a red flag with a Skull head on it and two crossed bones (all in white and in the middle of the flag), and then we marched on.’ There may be a possibility that a pirate, when designing his own flag, thought of St Nicholas in Deptford and copied the design. That pirate did not do it so well, though. As the church’s website points out, the skulls wear a laurel-wreath on their heads, probably to signify the victory over death over transient flesh. This wreath has not made it on to any pirate flags. It is still a story loved in Deptford, though. A local pub, the Bird’s Nest, has even nicknamed itself the ‘pirate pub’ due to the Jolly Roger legend.
The London Stone
History can be hidden in plain sight in the dustiest and busiest locations. Opposite Cannon Street station, set behind a metal grid in front of a branch of WHSmith sits the London Stone. The stone was the centre of a story in 2012 that named it as essential to the survival of London itself. It had been in its approximate location for a millennia or two, but the redevelopment of Cannon Street meant that property company Minerva wanted to move the stone, so that they could demolish the 1960s office block it occupies. The plan was to place it in the corner of its gleaming new Walbrook building on the corner of Cannon Street and Walbook. ‘The new dedicated setting will enhance the significance of the asset,’ Minerva wrote in 2011, ‘and better reveal its significance for current and future generations.’ Minerva did not, however, count on newspapers reporting the story with fears that moving the stone would be disaster to London. The Evening Standard , along with other papers, discovered an ancient saying that read: ‘So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long will London flourish.’
The London Stone is oolitic limestone and no one knows why it is there or what its original purpose was. It may have been part of a monument in front of the palace of a provincial Roman governor, which lay where Cannon Street is now. It may be a Saxon milestone of some sort: its original location is also the centre of Saxon London when it was re-established by King Alfred in AD 886. The stone has had its name since the twelfth century; an address recorded in a document dated between 1098 and 1108 is ‘Eadwaker aet lundene stane’. In his 1598 Survey of London , Stow writes of ‘a great stone called London Stone, fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with iron bars.’ It is thought that it was
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