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Harwich and the Jolly Roger

Jolly Roger, and the port of Harwich.

I was asked questions about pirates and why many submarines fly the Jolly Roger, skull and crossed bones… .

Moonlight Patrol detail 2
Moonlight Patrol detail 2
Many people correctly guess why however here is how that tradition got started…
Our ‘time machine’ takes us back to The Great War.

The Royal Navy was the most powerful navy in the world bar none.
British submarine HMS E9 was one of the young 13-year-old Royal Navy submarine service…

A naval tradition was born after E 9 of the Royal Navy’s ‘Silent Service’ had notched up her very first kill with two torpedoes at close range at Germany’s SMS Hela off Heligoland confirming the deadly effectiveness of sneaking around in the deep then launching a surprise attack on an enemy.

Moonlight Patrol
Moonlight Patrol
 
The British submarine’s Commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Max Horton, recalled Admiral Wilson’s words about early submarines, “underhand, unfair and damned un-English” and that the Admiral even went so far as to say: “They’ll never be any use in war and I’ll tell you why. I’m going to get the First Lord to announce that we intend to treat all submarines as pirate vessels in wartime and that we’ll hang all the crews.”
Horton told his signaler to sew a piratical Jolly Roger flag, which flew proudly from his boat’s periscope as she sailed into Harwich, Essex.
 
The skull and crossbones went on to be the Royal Navy Submarine Service’s official emblem, gleefully adopted by many other submarine services including most Commonwealth countries and the USN , submarines of the USA.