eli5 what was the point of the skull and bones pirate flag? why would you give away that you are a pirate?
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You wouldn’t just leave it flying 24/7, or even most of the time, you might fly it however when you were actively running down a vessel. Contrary to most fiction pirates rarely engaged in lengthy combat between ships, although it did happen. More often a pirate would force/encourage a ship to stop for boarding, demand money and goods, and then make off with it. In more extreme cases people might be sold as slaves and the vessel itself might be seized, but piracy was often more of a hit and run sort of crime. Pirates often preyed on merchant vessels and others unprepared to fight back, so intimidation was a big part of the deal; you wanted to take the fight out of them rather than really fight.
Blackbeard famously was the master of this, leaving lit long match fuses in his hair and beard, and adopting a wild demeanor. As a result people would just surrender, hand over their stuff and be glad when he and his crew left them alive.
In this context the flag was meant to terrify and to warn: pirates are here, “pull over” and give us your shit or we might have to take it by force.
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