Andrew Macgeorge

“ The Royal Standard is a flag personal to the sovereign. It was not always exclusively so, for in the seventeenth century the Lord High Admiral, when personally in command of the fleet, and sometimes also other commanders-in-chief, flew as their flag of command, not the Union, but the Standard. ”

“ For a long time the distinguishing flag of England has been a red cross on a white field. The flag of Scotland is a white saltire (or St. Andrew's cross) on a blue field, and what has come to be called the flag of Ireland is a red saltire on a white field. But Ireland, strictly speaking, never had till lately a national flag. The kings of Ireland previous to 1172 were not hereditary but elective. They were chosen from among the petty kings, and each king, when elected, brought with him and continued to use his own standard. ”

“ If a foreign flag is hoisted on shore—as it often is in compliment to some distinguished stranger—it must have the staff to itself. In 1851, when the queen of Louis Philippe visited Oban, the proprietor of the Caledonian Hotel, at which she resided, in compliment to his visitor, and in ignorance, no doubt, of the proprieties of the case, hoisted the French flag over the Union. ”

“ This small craft, under her daring and skilful commander, had made herself so much an object of terror by the many captures she had made that a Spanish frigate, heavily armed, was fitted out and sent after her. In order to get near the Speedy the Spaniard was disguised as a merchantman. For the same reason, Lord Cochrane, to lull suspicion and enable him to get near the merchant craft of the enemy, had also disguised his small vessel, and was sailing as a merchant brig under Danish colours. ”

“ I have before me "The Queen's Regulations and Orders for the Army," issued by the Commander-in-chief, in which flags which can be flown only on shore are confounded with flags which can be flown nowhere but on board ship. Yet the subject is really an interesting one, and, connected as it is with national history, it is deserving of a little study.
Flags are of many kinds, and they are put to many uses. They are the representatives of nations; they [pg 13] distinguish armies and fleets, and to insult a flag is to insult the nation whose ensign it is. ”

“ George's cross is to be "fimbriated as the saltire;" a direction so plain that the merest tyro in heraldry could not fail to understand it, and be able to paint the flag accordingly.
Let me premise another thing. It is a universal rule in heraldry that the verbal blazon, when such exists, is alone of authority. Different artists may, from ignorance or from carelessness, express the drawing differently from the directions before them, and this occurs every day; but no one is or can be misled by that if he has the verbal blazon to refer to. ”

“ When an action takes place at night, when flags cannot be seen, other modes of intimating surrender have to be reverted to. In the war with America, in 1815, when a British ship in a disabled state found she had no alternative but to surrender at midnight to an American ship of superior force, she did so by firing a lee gun and hoisting a light. In another case a French frigate, the Néréide, after a severe action during night with the British frigate Phœbe, surrendered to the latter by hauling down a light she had been carrying, and hailing that she surrendered. ”

“ Now, as a rule, the ships of all countries sail under their national colours. With us the flag under which all our ships sail is the Ensign, of which there are three—the white, the blue, and the red. It is a large flag of one of the colours named, with the Union in a square or canton at the upper part of the hoist. I may explain that the portion of a flag next the staff or rope from which it is flown is called the hoist, the next is called the centre, and the outer portion the fly. Besides the Union in the canton, the white ensign has the St. George's cross extending over the whole field. ”

“ At the interment of Lord Nelson, when his flag was about to be lowered into the grave, the sailors who assisted at the ceremony ran forward with one accord and tore it into small pieces, to be preserved as sacred relics. "I know," says Charles Kingsley—in those Brave Words which he addressed to our soldiers then fighting in the trenches before Sebastopol, "I know that you would follow those colours into the mouth of the pit; that you would die twice over rather than let them be taken. ”

“ Not to speak of civilians, are there many officers, in either the army or the navy, who, without a copy before them, could accurately construct or describe the flag of the nation under which they fight, or tell what its component parts represent? ”

“ Spain from the first period of her greatness bore the Castilian flag, quartering Castile and Leon. In an old illumination representing the coronation of Henry, son of John, King of Castile, there are on the king's left hand two men, unarmed, the one holding a banner of Castile and Leon quarterly, the other a blue pennon charged with three kings' heads-the banner of the three kings of Cologne. On his majesty's right hand a man, also unarmed, holds a shield with the arms of Castile and Leon. ”

“ It was only on the field of battle, and in presence of the royal standard, that a knight-banneret could be created. It was the custom for the commander of the host thus to reward the distinguished services of a knight-bachelor bearing a pennon, and he did so by tearing off the "fly," or outer part of that flag, and by so doing giving it a square form, thus making it a banner, and its bearer a knight-banneret. ”

“ Perceiving the flag to be struck the British sailors raised a shout of victory, and the Dutch crew, also deceived, ran from their guns. While the astonished admiral and his [pg 88] officers were trying in vain to rally their crew the English boarded the ship and carried her. For this daring service the boy was at once promoted to the quarter-deck, and he rose to be a distinguished admiral under Queen Anne.
INTERNATIONAL USAGE AS TO FLAGS. In time of peace it is considered an insult to hoist the flag of one friendly nation over that of another. ”

“ It has been said that the design of the flag was derived from arms borne by the family of Washington; but there is no foundation for this. An American writer—with probably as little ground for the statement—says: "the blue field was taken from the Covenanters' banner in Scotland, likewise significant of the League and Covenant of the United Colonies against oppression, and incidentally involving vigilance, perseverance, and justice. The stars were then disposed in a circle symbolizing the perpetuity of the union, as well as equality with themselves. ”

“ A flag of truce is white, both at sea and on land, but on board ship it is customary to hoist with it the national flag of the enemy—the white flag at the main and the enemy's ensign at the fore. On one occasion during the war in 1814 when the French frigate Clorinde was about to be attacked by the British frigate Dryad, the commander of the former, being desirous to ascertain what terms would be granted in case he surrendered, hoisted French colours aft and English colours forward. ”

“ One of our surveying vessels had taken advantage of a lull in the work to practise her crew with her formidable armament of two twenty-four pounders, and on a bright calm Mediterranean morning the gunner was sent for by the senior lieutenant, and directed to prepare a target. But here there arose a difficulty. The ship had been a long time from Malta, stores of all kinds were scarce, and of old bunting there was absolutely none. The gunner was in despair, but a marine came to the rescue, and offered his pocket-handkerchief as a substitute. ”

“ The Persians, like the Assyrians, carried their standards, in battle, on staffs or spears attached to chariots. Their royal standard was a golden eagle with wings expanded carried on the end of a spear. ”

“ The merchant flag is the same without the shield and crown. The Austro-Hungarian flag has the lower stripe half red and half green, with two shields, one on the right containing the arms of Austria, and the other bearing the arms of Hungary. (See Plate V. No. 4.)
The flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon I. on his declaration of the Kingdom of Italy. It is a modification of the French, the division of the field next the staff being, instead of blue, green, which, it is known, was a favourite colour of the emperor. ”

“ And, in order to meet a law in heraldry, that colour is not to be placed on colour, or metal upon metal, it is directed that where the red crosses of England and Ireland come in contact with the blue ground of the flag, they are to be "fimbriated"—that is, separated from the blue by a very narrow border of one of the metals—in this case silver, or white. ”

“ Traitors offend them." Subsequently the Essex hoisted her motto flag at the fore, and another on the mizen mast, with one American ensign at the mizen peak and a second lashed on the main rigging. Not to be outdone in decorations the British ship hoisted her motto flag with a profuse display of ensigns and union jacks, and all these were flying when the American ship was captured.
To hoist false colours in time of war in order to entice an enemy within reach has always been considered legitimate, but it is not allowable to engage, or to commit any hostile act, under them. ”

“ But with all these changes there remain only two crosses on the shield. The reader will naturally suppose, however, that the omission consisted in not adding the Irish saltire to that of Scotland, which had been there from the first. But no. In this instance there was certainly no "injustice to Ireland," for the extraordinary thing is, that the St. Andrew's cross has been taken away altogether, and the saltire of Ireland, distinguished by its fimbriated border, has been put in its place, Scotland being not now represented on the coin at all. ”

“ FLAGS OF THE COVENANTERS. Of the flags borne in Scotland by the Covenanters, in their noble struggle for liberty, several are extant, and connected as they are with so important a part of Scottish [pg 52] national history, they are replete with interest. One of these, which is preserved by the Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh, bears the national cross, the white saltire of Scotland, with five roses in the centre point, and the inscription "For religion, Covenants, king, and kingdomes" (Fig. 25) .
Fig. 25.—Flag of the Covenanters, A.D. 1679. ”

“ The standard is the personal flag of the sovereign of one united kingdom, and heraldic propriety appears to require that only one unvarying armorial achievement should be used on it—that of the larger and more important kingdom taking precedence, although Nisbet [25] claims precedence for the Scottish arms on the achievement of Great Britain as those of "the ancientest sovereignty." ”

“ But the emperor was preparing another and very different flag for his small army, of which I am able to [pg 108] give a representation from a very rare coloured engraving. [46] It was the tricolour of France, composed of the richest silk with the ornaments elaborately embroidered in silver. It bore the imperial crown with the letter N, and the eagle, on each of the blue and red portions, with the imperial bees; and over all the inscription, "L'Empereur Napoléon à la Garde Nationale de L'lle d'Elbe." ”

“ The flag of the American admirals is composed of the stripes alone, and the stars are used separately as a jack. One of the first American flags used at sea, and bearing only the twelve stars, is still preserved. It is the flag which was flown by the celebrated Paul Jones from his privateer, the Bon homme Richard, in his engagement with the English ship Serapis on 23d September, 1799. ”

“ The Union Jack is a diminutive of the Union. It is exclusively a ship flag, and, although of the same pattern as the Union, it ought never to be called the Union Jack except when it is flown on the jack-staff,—a staff on the bowsprit or fore part of a ship. ”

“ For some time after the Revolution the white field was retained. When the three colours came to be used there appears to have been at first no fixed order in arranging them, and in some cases they were placed vertically, and in others horizontally. By a decree in 1790 it was ordained that in the navy the flag on the bowsprit—the jack—should be composed of three equal bands placed vertically, that next the staff being red, the middle white, and the third blue. ”

“ From an early period the practice has prevailed of blessing standards, and this has continued to our own day in the British army when new colours are presented to a regiment—there being a special form of service at the consecration. The banner of William the Conqueror was one blessed and sent to him by the pope. Indeed, it has been the practice of the popes in every age to give consecrated banners where they wished success to an enterprise.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF FLAGS—GONFANON—PENNON—PENONCEL. In the middle ages almost every flag was a military one. ”

“ The mistake is the more curious as the Regulations elsewhere distinguish the Union Jack from the Union by speaking of the latter as the "Great Union."
The Jack when flown from the mast with a white border is the signal for a pilot. In this case it is called the Pilot Jack. When flown from the bowsprit of a merchant ship it must also have a white border.
It has been said that the term "Jack" is derived from the name of the sovereign James I. (Jacques) , in whose reign it was constructed. ”

“ The yellow flag is the signal of sickness and of quarantine.
USE OF FLAGS IN NAVAL WARFARE. Such are the principal naval flags. Of the circumstances in which they may or may not be legitimately used, especially in naval warfare, some interesting stories might be told.
Although it is prohibited to merchant ships to carry the colours used in the navy, this may be done in [pg 76] time of war to deceive an enemy. ”