BRITISH FLAGS.*
IT is an extraordinary fact that though the name of the Union Jack—or the Union Flag, as it should properly be called—is a kind of shorthand expression of all that we stand for as a nation, no serious history of our British flags has been written until now. The best work in the past was written by a German, Vice-Admiral Siegel, and was published in 1912. It is obviously wrong to call the Union Flag the Union Jack, as a Jack is the Union Flag contained inside a white border and is a special flag flown on a ship's bowsprit ; yet it is in accordance with our national temper, and to that extent, perhaps, a pleasing fact, that Englishmen are careless and inaccurate about express- ing deep feelings. Most British readers of Mr. Kipling must instinctively have understood that incident in Stalky and Co. when a blatant lecturer visited the school to speak on patriotism, and at the end of his lecture produced from his coat pocket a Union Flag, which he waved over his head. The boys, who were mostly sons of officers and who took the significance of the flag and the respect due to it as a matter of course and not as a thing to be talked about, turned hot and cold by turns at this portentous vulgarity.
Many of us would like to see a much more formal respect paid to the flag and taught in popular education. But we hesitate a little when we contemplate the appalling prospect of formal
• British Flags : their Bark History and Their Development at Sea, &e.
• W. G. Perrin. Illustrated in Colour by H. B. Vaughan. Cambridge: at the University Press, [30s. =LI
ceremonial acts coming under the control of the wrong kind of person and of the symbol being made an object of worship by a shrieking cult. The people who have felt most rightly about the flag may well have been the most silent. At all events, ignorance about the evolution of the Union Flag is general in this country. Few could describe the successive stages by which the Cross of St. Andrew for Scotland and the Cross of St. Patrick for Ireland were successively imposed upon the St. George's Cross of England. It may be, however, that " Union Jack," though a misnomer, has now obtained so firm a hold that it would be pedantic to object to it. The poets have done better for us in a way than the historians, for many of them have encouraged a sense of romance and reverence that was free from sentimentality.
But here at last we have from Mr. Perrin, the Admiralty Librarian and Secretary of the Navy Records Society, a history of British flags, which is all that it ought to be in the abundance of its information and in the spirit in which it is written. Mr. Perrin points out that an unfortunate gap has been left by the
destruction of the early seventeenth century records. He admits that there is still room for further work upon the history of the component crosses of the Union Flag, but the story of the Union Flag itself is now, as he gives it, substantially complete. An interesting point is that he has been unable to find any solid ground for the common belief that the Cross of St. George—a red cross on a white ground—was introduced as the national emblem of England by Richard I. He thinks it did not begin to attain that position until the early years of Edward L The very attractive ship of war of the time of Henry which forms the frontispiece of this book, and which is flying eight flags, proves that personal flags were long regarded as much more important than national flags. The Cross of St. George is the only national flag among the eight. A flag was originally a kind of crest or coat of arms, though there was, of course, an early use of flags for signalling commands. By the sixteenth century the Cross of St. George had become the distinguishing characteristic of English ships, and was flown indifferently by ships of war and merchantmen. When at the beginning of the seventeenth century James I. commanded all British ships to fly the combination of St. George's Cross and St. Andrew's Cross, certain Scotsmen took great offence at the fact that the English Cross was placed above the Scottish Cross. Mr. Perrin quotes the protest, which is delightfully quaint.
The changes among the flags used in British ships, for purposes of command and distinction, were multitudinous, but Mr. Perrin's narrative is always clear. Until the 'sixties of last century the Navy was still divided into three divisions under the Admirals of the Red, Blue, and White. The last and present sage is that
the White Ensign has become the one Ensign of the Navy, while the Red Ensign has become the distinguishing flag of the Mercantile Marine. The Blue Ensign is worn by certain impor- tant merchant ships, which form the Naval Reserve. Apart from these uses certain yacht clubs, of course, enjoy the privilege of flying distinguishing ensigns. The Royal Yacht Squadron alone is allowed the use of the White Ensign—a use which has often got members of that Club into trouble abroad, as the foreigner knows nothing of the privilege and associates any vessel flying a White Ensign with the British Admiralty. Several Yacht Clubs of distinction are allowed to fly a Blue Ensign.
In this admirable history, which will remain the standard work on the subject for a long time, Mr. Perrin allows himself only once to suggest the pride in the Flag which must have been in his mind all the time, and which was, of course, his motive in writing this history. He says, and they are the last words in his book :— " Among the privileges and duties of which a British flag has for so many centuries been an outward emblem, not the least in value has been that of freedom. Towards the end of 1769 Lord St. Vincent, then plain Captain Jervis, was in the Port of Genoa in H.M.S. Alarm.' Two Turkish galley slaves temporarily released from their chains were walking on the mole near theft galley when they caught sight of one of the Alarm's ' boats. They jumped into her and wrapped themselves in the British colours, claiming their freedom. The Genoese guard removed them by force, part of the boat's pendent being torn away in the struggle. Jervis demanded of the Doge and Senate of Genoa that the officer of the guard should bring the slaves with the fragment of the colours and make a formal apology on the quarter-deck of the Alarm.' When this had been done, Jervis asked tho slave who had wrapped the pendent round his body what were his sensations when the guard tore him from the pendent staff. His reply was that he felt no dread for he knew that the touch of the royal colours gave him freedom.' And upon this note I must make an end'
Previous page
