Captain Jack Sparrow

Captain Jack Sparrow has three goals for his mission:

1. He is to inspect as many treasures as possible before returning home to regale his young lady with his stories from afar. Photographs of Captain Jack on his journey will help him tell his story.

2. He is to travel via as many modes of transportation as possible.

3. His preferred method of travel, of course, is via pirate ship, so he would like to inspect the shores of both the Atlantic and the Pacific on this journey as well, for future reference. Have an opportunity to show him an additional shoreline? Awesome!

If you choose to help Captain Jack on his mission, please photograph him and post the photos online for our girl to view. Please place him in the next cache as soon as possible.

"You will always remember this as the day that you almost caught ... Captain JACK SPARROW!"

The piratical use of black flags, with skull and crossbones or other motifs upon them, predates the appearance of the term "Jolly Roger" by at least twenty years. The first known pirate use of the black flag with skull and crossbones is by Emanuel Wynne about 1700. Henry Every is frequently shown in secondary sources using the skull and crossbones on black in 1695 or 1696, but contemporary evidence for this is lacking. A piratical black flag is also attributed to Thomas Tew, who plundered Mughal shipping in 1693, but this design did not feature skull or crossbones, and its authenticity is dubious.

From early Roman times on through the Middle Ages, skulls and long bones were associated with death, long before they became symbols of piracy. Skulls and long bones were displayed in catacombs, monasteries, churches, church crypts and graveyards. They are the bones that resist decay the longest, and remain long after the corpse has gone. They were then carefully laid out respecting the dead. Later, skull and long bones crossed were depicted or sculpted in said places, especially above the entrances to churches and graveyards. They served as a Memento Mori, meaning "remind yourself of your own death." It was a general warning against the sin of vanity, reminding bypassers of their mortality. Thus, it became at once a common symbol of death and decay and a warning against the vagaries of fortune, as well as a first hint of an emerging sense of egalitarianism: in death, we are all equal. Thus, when appearing on pirate flags, the allusion to death would be instantly understood by any observer.

After 1700, the use of black flags by pirates proliferated as at least a dozen pirate crews were flying black flags. The piratical use of black flags was evidently far more common than the use of the skull and crossbones device upon them. Walter Kenedy is the only pirate documented by as using the skull and crossbones design without further adornment. From other sources it is known that Edward England and some 19th century Algerian corsairs used the skull and crossbones. Richard Worley may also have used the device; Johnson says that he "made a black Ensign, with a white Death’s Head in the middle of it, and other Colors suitable to it," which is consistent with, though not fully corroborative of, the skull on crossbones device traditionally attributed to Worley in secondary sources. However, not all pirates used black flags, even during the 18th century. Red was also a frequently used color, as will be seen below, and during the buccaneering period of the 17th century, red flags were far more associated with pirates than black ones were.