Book Notes A fortnightly publication of the JRBS
Vol. 1, No. 13
December 1–15, 2020
In May of 1929 the JCB accessioned a manuscript book of British Navy signal flags. Its current designation is “Codex Eng 32" and is discussed in the JCB Annual Report for 1929 (pp. 15-16). Howard M. Chapin, Librarian of the Rhode Island Historical Society, took this as an opportunity to deliver a talk to the Study Hill Book Club on his interest in naval signal flags, explicating this work as well as others. A copy of the talk is in the Wroth Papers, and it is herewith transcribed.
Naval Signal Flags
By Howard M. Chapin
Delivered to the Study Hill Club on May 31, 1929
Every boy who lives near a sea-port and spends his younger days playing about wharves and docks, or along the shore of a travelled waterway, loves boats, and becomes fascinated by the glamor and romance of the sea, by ships and by nautical affairs in general. He readily learns the types of vessels, much of the parlance of the sea, and a rudimentary knowledge of maritime affairs. Flags naturally attract his attention and he soon learns to distinguish between the various classes of flags, such as ensigns, jacks, house flags, yacht club flags, yacht private signals, and signal code flags; and to recognize many of them at sight. Signal code flags offer the most baffling and difficult problem and generally arouse an interest and curiosity that is never satisfied.
The signal flags used for communication between merchant vessels, between a merchant vessel and a war vessel, and between war vessels of different nations, are the flags of what is known as the International Signal Code. This code is the nearest approach to a universal language that has ever been adopted as a practical means of communication. It has only been partially supplanted by wireless radio, and it is still (and is expected to continue) so important a factor in maritime communication that the code is at present being revised in connection with radio communication and a new code book is soon to be issued.
The International Code has developed gradually through a long and tedious process of experimentation. The present code is alphabetical, there being a flag for each letter of the alphabet. This is an extension of the alphabetical code of Victorian days, which omitted flags for vowels, so that sailors could not hoist signals which would spell profane or obscene words.
The early alphabetical codes were based on numerical codes wherein each flag represented a number. The change from a numerical code of ten flags, each representing a numeral, to an alphabetical code of 18 flags (the vowels and x and z omitted) was made in order to increase the number of flags and hence the number of messages which could be sent in hoists of four flags each. It was found unsatisfactory to use more than four flags in one hoist, that is displayed at one time as part of the same signal.
The numerical code was invented about 1740 by Mahé de la Bourdonnais, of the French East India Company, and used by him for some years. It eventually fell into disuse, but served as a basis for the code devised by the Chevalier de Pavillion which was adopted by the French navy in 1773. It is a curious coincidence that a man named Pavillion should have devised a signal flag code. Ten years later the English navy followed the example of the French and adopted a numerical code.
We have [been] brought up on the phrase “Britannia rules the waves” and have generally associated the beginnings of this maritime súzerainty with the exploits of Drake in the time of Queen Elizabeth so that it is rather a shock to Anglo-Saxons, and to Nordics in general, to discover that the illustrated signal code book, the numerical flag signals, and a subsequent development of the numerical code, known as the checker-board system, were all invented by the French and copied by the English.
As early as 1693 the French had issued an illustrated signal code book in which each signal was represented by the picture of a ship displaying the various signal flags in their proper places. This method of graphically showing the signals was copied by Jonathan Greenwood in an illustrated signal book of the English naval code.
This book, which is ascribed to the year 1714, is a pocket manual containing over one hundred illustrations with the signal flags colored by hand. It takes but a few moments to run through the pages of this book and find any given flag signal and its meaning. The signals are grouped according to their place of display, so that it is evident that the book was designed for receiving rather than for sending, though it could be used for the latter. There are copies of this signal book in the library of Paul Nicholson in Providence and in the New York Public Library.
The manuscript signal book now in the John Carter Brown Library marks another step in the development of the signal book. In this book the signals are arranged by flags. The book is indexed by a marginal “cut in” thumb index, in which the thumb spaces, which usually carry the letters of the alphabet, in this book carry pictures of the flags, each design painted in its proper colors, so that when a signal is seen, all that it is necessary for the observer to do is to place his thumb on the picture of the flag observed, and the book will open to the page where there is a list of all the signals in which this flag is used. Of course this book was designed primarily for receiving.
The English naval signal code had its origin in a very few meagre flag signals which were in use in the time of Edward the Third. As early as 1338 two flag signals were flown on His Majesty’s ships, one calling a council of war and the other warning of the approach of the enemy. It is not known what flags were used in these signals, although it seems probable that the banner of council high in the middle of the mast, was probably the royal standard. The naval council of war gradually developed into two councils, an inner council of high officers, and a general council of all the captains. This necessitated two signals and as early as 1596 the royal standard was used to call the council of war and the St. George flag to call a general council.
The royal standard was a flag charged with the arms of the King of England. In the days of chivalry the royal standard was identical in design with the shield bearing the royal arms, as the royal standard is today, which is often to be seen flying from Buckingham Palace in London. In the later fourteenth century the cross of St. George was sometimes added to the royal arms and in the time of the Stuarts often instead of merely the device of the shield, the whole achievement of the king, the shield, crest, supporters, motto and badges, were born on a white field as the royal standard. The St. George flag was a white flag with a red cross extending to the edges of the flag.
It was not until the Dutch wars of the Protectorate that the English naval flag signals began to develop into anything extensive enough to be called a code. This Commonwealth Code of 1653 utilized only the few flags that were ordinarily carried on shipboard. In 1665 the code was enlarged by the Duke of York and in 1673 Instructions were issued which contained colored illustrations of the flags. These Instructions of 1673 formed the basis of the naval signal code which continued in use for over a hundred years. Of course additions were made to this code from time to time as the exigencies of various occasions required and the number of flags increased from the fifteen in use in 1673 to about fifty flags in 1780. The British naval code of 1673 remained in use for a longer period of time than any other code of marine signal flags. It is the code which is written in the manuscript code book which the John Carter Brown Library has recently purchased and which is on exhibition. The flags of this code were familiar to American seamen and in American harbors throughout the greater part of the colonial period, for English naval vessels were stationed along our coast. Indeed not only the flags, but many of the signals were known to the captains of American merchant vessels and privateers, for the code was not secret as are the naval codes of today, but printed code books could be bought from booksellers.
The flags themselves did not carry the entire signal as they do today, but the position of display determined the signal in nearly every case, and in many signals the sails also played a necessary part.
The meaning of the signals, that is the messages sent, are in general of too technical a nature to interest anyone except a student of naval tactics. It may be interesting however to trace briefly the origin of the use as signal flags of some of the flags illustrated in this book, flags which our sea-faring colonial ancestors were accustomed to watch fluttering in the breeze from the yard-arms and mast-heads of the formidable British naval vessels of those days.
The first flag illustrated in the book is the royal standard, the first flag known to have been used as a signal flag by the English. Although the royal standard has always borne the royal arms, these royal arms have changed from time to time, for the royal arms were the personal arms of the king and changed from generation to generation in accordance with the heraldic rules of inheritance of coats of arms, modified by certain royal prerogatives, until the year 1800 when the royal arms of Great Britian ceased to be the personal arms of the king, and became the arms of the office of the king.
As shown in this book, the royal standard bears a rough simulation of the royal arms as they were borne by George I, George II, and George III before 1800.
The royal standard was probably used in the signal calling a council of war in 1338, for it was certainly used for that signal in 1369 and continued to be used for that signal (excepting for a short time about 1628) until 1783, a period of over four hundred years.
The Union flag, or British flag, usually miscalled the Union jack, came into use as a signal flag in 1628. It is only a jack when it is a small flag such as is flown from the bow of a ship. When flown on land or as a large size flag at the mast head, it is called the Union flag. It came into use as a flag in the reign of James I to show the union of England and Scotland.
The red flag appears as a signal flag in the English navy in 1647, as the signal for battle. It was not primarily an English signal, but one of those international customs of the sea, whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. It is said that in all probability the red flag as a signal for battle had its origin in the “scarlet cloak” which the ancient Greeks used for the signal, which they are supposed to have borrowed from the Phoenicians. However, as early as 1299 Norman ships flew the red flag as a signal of battle in which no quarter would be given. These red flags of the Normans were streamers of red sandal silk two yards broad and thirty yards long and were called baucans or baukans. This word baucan signifying the red flag of merciless battle must not be confused with the word bauçan (with the “c” soft) which was the name applied to the black and white banner of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. The similarity of these words emphasizes the difficulties encountered in the study of flags. The word baucan, a red flag, is related to the word beacon, while the word bauçan, a black and white flag, is derived from balzan, a piebald horse. The word subsequently became bauseant. The baucan or red flag of battle was used by the early pirates and so came to be considered an emblem of piracy. This red flag of piracy was flown at the main-mast head by Thomas Pound, the pirate, on October 4, 1689 in the fight in Vinyard Sound. This “bloody flag” was carried as the flag of piracy as late as 1718 by the famous pirate Stede Bonnet. The black flag however was by this time rapidly coming into use as the flag of piracy and as such was flown by the pirate Worley in this same year 1718.
From the fact that for over four hundred years the red flag had been the recognized symbol for combat at sea and that it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the recognized flag of piracy, it would seem most probable that this was the flag carried by that group of pirates of the seventeenth century, known as Buccaneers, the flag under which they fought. This suggests the possibility that the Buccaneers derived their name from the baucan, the red flag under which they fought, and not from the word baucan to cook meat as Esquemeling so naively explains.
It seems probable that philology in this instance may have gone astray and that the philologist who derived the buccaneer from the meat cooker was probably unacquainted with the fact that the red flag of piracy was known to mariners as the baucan. Esquemeling, who of course was a first hand authority, merely repeated the gossip of ignorant sailor pirates, and the philological explanation of persons of that sort has often proved to be untrustworthy.
The red flag is said to have been used in the fourteenth century, by Pisa, and by Spain, Venice, Kempen and Genoa in the seventeenth century, although it was probably not used as a national flag but merely as a flag of some particular office or regiment. In the picture of Captain Thomas Savage, which was painted in 1679, the red flag appears as the regimental or divisional flag of some New England militia organization. The red flag was flown by the pirates of the Barbary coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, probably, however, as a signal for battle or as a flag of piracy rather than as national colors, although it is given as the national colors of several Moslem states on various sheets of colored flags issued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today the red flag is the recognized sign of danger, of an auction sale and of a communistic revolutionary demonstration. As a two-tailed flag (International Code flag B) it signifies the presence of explosives, hence danger, and as a single tailed pennant it signifies that the crew is at meals if the ship is at anchor, but if the ship is under way that she is going faster than her regular speed, which may be a derivative from the danger signal. The red flag has had still other uses, so that perhaps it may be considered to have carried more varied significance than any other flag.
The white flag, the fourth flag illustrated in the book, is said to have come into general use as a recognized international naval signal flag-of-truce, or of surrender, as early as the end of the fifteenth century. It was the naval adoption of a military usage which had been in vogue for centuries. It was hoisted on the ensign staff as a flag of truce on Sir Richard Hawkins’ ship in April 1594 in the Bay of San Mateo. However, as a naval flag of truce it was not entirely successful, for as early as 1596 the white flag had been suggested as a designating or divisional flag in the English navy, and was used as such in 1625 and for many years thereafter. It came into use as an English naval signal flag as early as 1653 and was adopted by the French navy as an ensign in 1661 and so used until the French Revolution and the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1789. On account of the use of the white flag as an ensign by the French navy, and as a divisional flag by the English navy, its use as an international naval flag-of-truce caused trouble. In 1794 during the attack on Martinique the French Republicans fired on an English white flag of truce, which they mistook for the ensign of the Bourbons, their deposed rulers. A similar mistake of the white flag of truce for the ensign of the Bourbons, may explain an accusation, made by Kirby in his thrilling historical novel, The Golden Dog, wherein he states that Jumonville de Villiars was “in defiance of a flag of truce shot down by order of Colonel Washington, in the far-off forests of the Alleghenies.”
The blue flag with the white square center, which is technically known as a blue flag pierced white and which is commonly called the Blue Peter, determines the date after which the manuscript signal book has been written, for this flag, according to Perrin, the Librarian of the British Admiralty, did not come into use until 1759. It superseded a blue flag charged with five white balls, which probably was discarded on account of its poor visibility except in a very strong wind. The Blue Peter, which is said to derive its name from blue repeater, has continued in use as a signal flag and is now International Code flag P and is flown by a ship about to sail. It is the signal for a pilot.
The date before which the manuscript was written is determined by the appearance of the red and white striped pennant which is one of the four signal flags adopted between 1759 and 1762, and as the other three are not included in the manuscript, the presumption is that this one was the first of the four to be adopted and that the manuscript was written nearer to 1759 and probably about 1760.
As might be expected no hitherto unknown signal flags appear in this book, but the nomenclature and the details of some of the flag designs differ from those used in other code books.
For instance the white ensign is called the St. George flag. In the previous century the flag usually called the St. George flag was a white flag with a red cross which in this book is merely called “red cross on white.” This change in meaning of the phrase “St. George flag” is important, especially to persons studying eighteenth-century naval documents. Several centuries earlier the phrase St. George flag meant a flag bearing the device of St. George in the act of killing the dragon. This gradual change of meaning of nautical terms and phrases is one of the great difficulties encountered by anyone studying the subject.
The flags divided horizontally of two colors are described as half red–half white, and half blue–half white. In the striped flags of two colors the number of stripes in this code is shown as six, except in the case of the fireship flag, which has six yellow and 6 or 7 white stripes which are diagonal, and are described as “from corner to corner.” In these striped flags the number of stripes was of no importance and varied on different ships. The striped flag of three colors, red, white, and blue, has six stripes, as it probably always had, and is really the Dutch flag often known as the Double Prince. The red, white, and blue flag of three stripes in this code is sometimes called the Dutch Ensign and sometimes the Dutch Jack. There may have been a difference in size not shown by the illustrations.
The Broad Pennant and a striped pennant of three red and two white stripes are long triangular pennants such as were in use in the latter part of the eighteenth century and not the wide two-tailed pennants such as were in use in the early years of the century.
The illustrations of the checkered flags are interesting in showing the number of checks, which probably varied considerably in the same flags as used on different ships. The number of checks, as in the case of the number of stripes of most of the striped flags, was a matter of no importance. In this book the red and white checkered flag has eight vertical and five horizontal rows, and the blue and yellow checkered flag has ten vertical and six horizontal rows.
The most interesting flag from the point of view of design is the Spanish Jack. This flag is shown as a white flag charged with three shields, one large shield in the center and two smaller ones on either side of the larger one and slightly lower on the flag. Each shield is surmounted by a gold crown. The shields are quartered, the center and outer shields León quartered with Castile (viz. quarterly 1 and 4 León and 2 and 3 Castile), while the shield nearer the staff shows Castile quartered with León (viz. quarterly 1 and 4 Castile and 2 and 3 León). The arms of Castile are gules a castle triple towered or and those of León argent a lion rampant gules.
It might naturally be expected that the earliest signal flags would be rectangular flags of plain colors, but this is not the case. Doubtless it would have been the case if the signal codes had been designed on land and with premeditation, but the early signal codes were more or less emergency measures, hurriedly devised at sea, where it was necessary to utilize such flags as were readily at hand. At first the national flags of the ships were used, and later the flags of foreign countries, for war vessels have for centuries carried a supply of flags of foreign countries, for use in emergencies as a means of deception, both for their own protection and in order to lure the enemy. Occasional use of foreign flags as emergency signals at sea persisted long after official codes had been adopted. Foreign flags were used as signal flags by the American navy during the Revolution. La Bourdonnais, who drew up the first numerical codes, used flags and pennants of single colors and of two colors, but his codes were obviously thought out carefully in advance. The red flag and the white flag were carried by warships on account of their international significance, and the blue flag was a divisional flag, so that the first flag to be devised primarily as a British naval signal code flag was the horizontally striped red and white flag. It appears in the Instructions of 1673, it is shown in the manuscript signal book in the Jon Carter Brown Library, and persisted in use until 1799. With this flag, two other new ones also make their debut in the Instructions of 1673, the flag striped diagonally red and white, and the flag striped diagonally red and yellow. These two latter flags were short lived and do not appear in the 1714 code book.
The flag described in this book as the English ensign is what is usually known as the red ensign. It has the union of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew in the canton, and so differs from the red ensigns of the previous century which only carried the cross of St. George, and also differs from the present red ensign which contains the cross of St. Patrick in addition to the other two crosses. According to McCandless,[1] the red ensign, which appears in this book under the name of the English ensign, was called the Bugee Flag in 1703. This is evidently a variant spelling of name Burgee Flag which is mentioned in the Boston Post-Boy in 1703. I ventured to suggest that this flag was so called because merchant vessels were authorized to use it. Mr. Onions, one of the editors of Murray’s New Oxford English Dictionary, confirms this view in a letter, as follows:
It seems very probable from information available since burgee was published in our Dictionary that the word is ultimately due to the French Bourgeoise as in Burgees caution a rendering of French caution bourgeoise, (security of wealthy resident citizens) found in 1653 in the Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde.
This burgee flag must not be confused with the type of flag called a burgee on account of its shape.
As we have said, the signal code shown in this book continued in use in the English navy until 1783, when it was superseded by a numerical code. In the first half of the nineteenth century many persons busied themselves with designing codes for merchant vessels. American sea captains generally used Rogers’ code, the English and many others used Marryat’s code, which was really the most popular one, and the French used one prepared by Captain Reynold de de Chauvancy. A Dane named Rohde published a code known as The Universal Sea Language in 1835. So many different codes were in use that it is often very difficult to tell to which code the signal flags belong, which appear in many of the nineteenth century ship portraits. There were at least two port codes, one known as Holy-head outside of Liverpool and another code used similarly at Boston Harbor. Rogers redesigned his signal flags about 1855 in such an arrangement of colors and designs that each signal flag would be distinguishable from all the others, even when hanging limp in a calm. Phillips, an Englishman, designed a code in 1835, in which the difference in the signals was merely one in shape, with no distinguishing colors nor designs. He used only seven flag signals and two bells. This gives an idea of the experimentation which took place in the early nineteenth century. In 1857 the English Board of Trade issued the so-called “Commercial Code” which was based on Marryat’s code and which in 1880 was renamed the International Code and is the one in use today.
The John Carter Brown Library also has another interesting signal book. Its imprint reads “Imprimerie Royale a l’isle de France 1779.” L’isle de France was then the name of the island in the Indian Ocean now called Mauritius, and apparently the Imprimerie Royale was one of the French naval sea-presses which was temporarily set up on shore, just as was done at Newport, Rhode Island, in the following year. This book was unknown to M. Parès, the French bibliographer, when he prepared his monograph on Imprimeries d’Escadre[2] two years ago. He writes that he thinks this signal book was printed in connection with the French preparations for an attack on India. Although the signal book is printed, the tables of flags are in manuscript and are hand colored, doubtless because the squadron printing press had no facilities for engraving plates. Seven of the eleven flags are the same as those of the French code of 1773 which was designed by the Chevalier de Pavillion.
[1] Byron McCandless (1881-1967) in 1917 was described by National Geographic Magazine as the "foremost flag expert of the United States Government and probably the leading authority in the world on flag usages among maritime nations."
[2] A. Jacques Pares, Imprimeries d’Escadre (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1928).
