



Produced by Chris Curnow, John Campbell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)









  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
  Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.
  Superscripts are denoted by ^ and have not been expanded;
    for example 'I am informed y^t the Ma^{rs} of'.

  Obvious typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected
  after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and
  consultation of external sources.

  More detail can be found at the end of the book.




  CAMBRIDGE NAVAL AND MILITARY SERIES

  GENERAL EDITORS

  SIR JULIAN S. CORBETT, LL.M., F.S.A.

  H. J. EDWARDS, C.B., C.B.E., M.A.




  BRITISH FLAGS




  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
  LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4


  NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.

  BOMBAY   }
  CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
  MADRAS   }

  TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO. OF
  CANADA, LTD.

  TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




  [Illustration: _A Ship of Henry VIII, circa 1545_]




  BRITISH FLAGS

  THEIR EARLY HISTORY, AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT
  AT SEA; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF
  THE FLAG AS A NATIONAL DEVICE

  BY
  W. G. PERRIN

  ADMIRALTY LIBRARIAN
  SECRETARY OF THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY
  FELLOW OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR

  BY
  HERBERT S. VAUGHAN

  CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION
  OF HONOUR


  CAMBRIDGE
  AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  1922




PREFACE


It might have been expected that the attempt to trace to their origin
in the past the institutions and customs in common use upon the sea
would from an early date occupy the attention of a seafaring people,
but for some obscure reason the British nation has always been
indifferent to the history of its activities upon that element on which
its greatness was founded, and to which it has become more and more
dependent for its daily bread and its very existence. To those who
are alive to this fact it will hardly come as a surprise, therefore,
to learn that the first sustained attempt at a detailed investigation
into the history of the flag at sea was made under the patronage
of the German Admiralty by a German Admiral. Vice-Admiral Siegel's
_Die Flagge_, published in 1912, was the first book to deal with the
development of the flag at sea in a scientific spirit, and although
the earlier chapters contain some mistakes due to his employment of
translations of early works instead of original texts, and the accounts
of the British flags in the later chapters suffer because he had no
access to original records, it is a worthy piece of work.

The present book is an attempt to remove the reproach to the British
nation which this implies. Its plan is somewhat different from that
of the work referred to above. Instead of dealing with the flags of
all maritime nations of the world--a task that (if it was to be more
than a mere copying or compilation) would entail much work in foreign
archives--it seemed more profitable to concentrate upon the history
of British Naval Flags, for researches made so far back as 1908 had
taught me how much that is inaccurate about their history had received
acceptance. But first it seemed necessary to devote some time and
space to the inquiry into the origin of the flag and how it became the
honoured symbol of nationality that it now is, and for this a general
view had to be taken in order that a firm foundation might be