(ii) PRIVATE MEN-OF-WAR

The "private man-of-war" or "privateer[319]" was a vessel the owner (or owners) of which had received from the Crown, or from the Lord High Admiral, "Letters of Marque and Reprisal." The occasion for the issue of such a licence, which was originally granted in the form of Letters Patent—whence the name—might be either special or general. It might be issued "specially" to some merchant who was able to prove that he had suffered certain losses from the action of the subjects of some foreign power, and who was thereupon authorised to make seizure of any ships or goods belonging to subjects of that State until he had by that means taken sufficient plunder to make good the losses formerly sustained by him, but no more. Such licences were also issued "generally" upon the outbreak of hostilities with a foreign state, to any subjects who wished to make war upon enemy vessels on the chance of making some profit by it, and who were able to give satisfactory security that they would comply with the regulations laid down for their conduct, particularly in the matter of the disposal of prizes taken. During the wars of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries merchants frequently sought Letters of Marque for their vessels, not because they wished them to take the offensive as regular privateers, but because they were thereby freed of all danger of being classed as "pirates" should they attempt to turn the tables upon any enemy that attacked them. For this reason many, perhaps most, of the ships of the East India and Guinea Companies fitted out in the seventeenth century carried Letters of Marque and displayed the Union jack.

Indeed, despite the issue of the Proclamations of 1634 and 1674, it seems that all privateers in the seventeenth century were in the habit of wearing the Union jack—sometimes with the permission of the authorities, but more often without it—with the object of making themselves look (so far as flags were concerned) as much like the king's ships as possible. The instructions for privateers issued toward the end of that century indicate that there was some infirmity of purpose on the part of the authorities in enforcing the existing law as regards the wearing of the Union jack. Thus the Instructions for privateers operating against Algiers[320], issued in December, 1681, provided

whereas the Instructions for Privateers fitted out against France issued in May, 1693, merely ordered that the Union jack or pendant (which actually were illegal without special warrant) should not be worn in presence of H.M. ships or in circumstances in which they might give occasion to a salute by a friendly foreign power.

A special distinguishing flag for privateers was first provided in the Royal Proclamation issued in July, 1694, which ordained that vessels receiving "Commissions of Letters of Mart or Reprisals" should wear, in addition to the St George's flag at the masthead and the red ensign with canton of St George at the stern, "a Red Jack with the Union Jack described in a Canton of the upper corner thereof next the staff"—the flag that Pepys in 1687 called the Budgee jack—which was in fact of the same design as the red ensign adopted in 1707, though apparently the canton occupied a larger proportion of the area of the flag in the jack than in the ensign[321].

Despite this precise direction, the privateer Instructions issued against France and Spain in December, 1704, contain the same instructions as those of 1693 quoted above, which presuppose that these vessels would fly the Union jack and pendant, which the Proclamation of 1694 had forbidden—but indeed, this muddle-headed attitude is not uncommon in official instructions. It is clear that privateers did carry pendants, for Woodes Rogers relates that he was ordered to strike his pendant by the 'Arundel' in August, 1708, "which we immediately did, all private commissioned ships being obliged by their Instructions to pay that respect to all her Majesty's ships and fortifications." The Distinction Jack of 1694 (subject to the necessary modification of the Union in 1801) remained the distinguishing flag of a privateer until privateering was abolished in 1856.

(iii) PUBLIC SHIPS FOR USES OTHER THAN WAR

The first suggestion that public ships which were not men-of-war should wear some distinctive flag is found in the Sub Notes about Flags and Colours drawn up by Pepys about the year 1687. He writes:

The Revolution of 1688 put an end to Pepys' reforming activities, and no steps were taken to distinguish such ships until 1694, when a Royal Proclamation issued 12th July provided that

An Order in Council of 19th November in the same year provided further that "boats imployed in the service of the Generall Post Office be permitted to carry colours to distinguish them from other boats, and that in the said Colours there be represented a man on horseback blowing a Post horne," and from later papers in the same year it appears that the intention was that this device should be placed in the fly of the red jack, like the seals of the other government departments.

The proclamations of 1702 and 1707 confirmed the use of the red jack with the seal of office, but the King's Regulations of 1731 introduced a slight variation by providing that the seal might be placed in the body of the jack or ensign; the Regulations of 1806 completed the transfer by directing that the seal should be described "in the fly of the ensign," and the Regulations of 1844, not content with this, provided that the seal or badges should be placed "in the centre of both Ensign and Jack."

In July, 1864, the colour of the Ensign was altered to blue, and the red jack became an Union jack with a white border, both with the seals or badges as before, but the introduction of the "white bordered Jack" into this clause of the Order in Council appears to have been a slip, for the Addenda to the Regulations published in 1868 specified that the jack was to be of the same design as before but blue, like the ensign, and thus it remains; the difference between the jack and the ensign being that the former is smaller and square[323], instead of oblong in the proportion of two to one.

The badges of the offices referred to in the proclamation of 1694 were as follows:

In 1701 the Admiralty complained to the King that the Governors of the plantations—the English Colonies of North America and the West Indies—were in the habit of authorising certain merchant ships, to which they gave commissions, to wear the colours of the king's ships. This the Governors claimed to do in virtue of their Vice-Admiralty commissions and because they conceived

Presumably these ships, which certainly engaged in "common trade," were also employed on protection and police duties that would normally have been performed by ships of the Royal navy, had such ships been present there in sufficient numbers. On the 31st July of the same year an Order in Council was issued directing such ships to wear a jack with a white escutcheon[324] in the centre, and forbidding them to wear the ordinary Union jack. I have not met with this special form of jack at any later date, and it seems probable that the use of these colonial hired ships was discontinued after Benbow arrived in these waters in the late autumn of that year, though an Article providing for the use of the jack appeared some years after in the Instructions issued to the Governors of these colonies. It might seem that these vessels should be classed as hired men-of-war or as privateers, but the memorial of the Admiralty to the Council places them in the category of "those employed by the Officers of the Navy, Ordnance, Victualling and others."

After the disappearance of this jack there were no special distinguishing flags for colonial vessels until 1866, when it was laid down that ships in the public service of a colony might fly the blue ensign with the distinguishing badge of the colony.

Besides the Public Offices there are a number of corporate bodies whose functions are of a public nature and who have the right to fly a special flag upon their vessels at sea. The most ancient of these is the Corporation of Trinity House, a body first incorporated by Henry VIII in 1514. Its flag (Plate XII, fig. 4) may be seen flying upon the Trinity yacht when leading the Admiralty and Royal yachts during a review of the fleet, or when escorting the sovereign at sea; on such occasions the Trinity yacht flies also a white ensign. The duties of this Corporation are, however, mainly concerned with the erection and maintenance of lighthouses, beacons and other sea marks around the English coast. Similar duties in Scottish waters are performed by the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses, who fly upon their vessels a blue ensign with a white lighthouse in the fly, the Commissioners' own flag being a form of white ensign without the St Patrick's cross in the Union, and with a blue lighthouse but no St George's cross in the fly. Vessels belonging to Lloyds fly a blue ensign with the badge shown in Plate XII, fig. 10. The Port of London Authority, Thames Conservancy, Humber Conservancy, and Mersey Docks and Harbour Board have each their special badge, but these are of no historical interest. The modern Cinque Ports flag (Plate XII, fig. 5) is now never flown at sea, but is flown upon Walmer Castle, the residence of the Lord Warden.

(iv) MERCHANT SHIPS

As already remarked, the first legislative enactment providing for a distinction between the flags of merchantmen and ships belonging to the Crown was in the year 1634. We shall briefly review the position of affairs in the earlier years of that century. When James I united the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603 the English merchant ships were in the habit of flying the St George's flag at one or more mastheads, while those of Scotland flew the St Andrew's flag in a similar manner. It seems that in the great majority of these ships no other flags were flown, but some of the larger ships, especially those engaged in voyages to foreign parts, seem to have allowed themselves the additional luxury of a striped ensign (which appears to have been displayed only when attacking or resisting attack from pirates or other foreign ships, or when signalling to consorts), and also a number of pendants or streamers, which were probably only used on like occasion, or on occasions of special ceremony or rejoicing. Thus, for the ships fitted out by the East India Company in January, 1601, there was provided "for eche of the shippes 12 Streemers, 2 fflagges and one Auncient." In an inventory of the Company's ship 'Hector' of the preceding September there is mentioned besides "2 ancyents and 28 pendaunts," "a smale flag for the boat spirrit." This is the earliest instance in which I have met with a jack flag for the bowsprit in an inventory, and its use at this date must have been extremely rare and exceptional.

On the union of the two crowns, disputes as to precedence of flags appear to have broken out between the English and Scots merchant seamen, hitherto "foreigners" to each other. James attempted to remove the cause of these by providing in 1606 a combined flag, which was to be borne by both parties in their maintop, the English retaining the St George's cross at the foretop and the Scots the St Andrew's cross. So far as the Scots were concerned this attempt at compromise appears to have been rejected, for reasons already related in Chapter III, but the English adopted it. Thus, in the period between 1606 and 1634 the English merchantmen were bearing aloft two flags: the "Britain" flag, as it was then called, and the St George's flag, and although they were warned in the Proclamation of 1606 not "to bear their flags in any other sort" it is clear that some were also using on the poop a striped ensign with a St George's cross in a canton. The colours of the stripes appear to have been a matter of individual taste. Thus the ensign illustrated in the contemporary map[325] of Baffin's voyage for the discovery of the North-west Passage in 1615 displays red, green and blue stripes[326].

In 1634 the inconveniences arising from the fact that the king's ships and merchant ships wore the same flags had become so pronounced that a Proclamation was issued withdrawing the right to use the Union flag for the merchant ships and confining those of England to the St George's flag and those of Scotland to the St Andrew. No mention is made of any poop ensign, from which it may be inferred that this flag was not yet in common use among merchantmen. By the time of the Commonwealth the striped ensign appears to have gone out of use, and the merchantmen seem to have gradually adopted the red ensign introduced into the fleet in 1625. The order of 1649 requiring the ships in the service of the State to bear the St George's flag only does not seem to have been applied to merchant ships, and from a reference in 1656 to the flying of the "English Collers" improperly by a merchant ship lying at the Brill, when these colours were worn "with the Cross downewards" (i.e. the flag being inverted in contempt) it is clear that the English ensign at that date had the cross in a canton, and was not the plain St George's flag. The use of the red ensign was for the first time legally recognised as the distinctive flag of a British merchant ship in a Proclamation of 1674[327], in which the colours are expressly laid down as being

This order definitely abolished the use of any striped ensign, if any such still survived outside of the East India Company's ships. The red and white striped ensign[328] of that Company, which was probably adopted on its formation in 1600, remained, however, unchanged in spite of the Proclamation, and in 1676 the Commander-in-Chief in the Downs drew Pepys' attention to the fact. In his reply of the 20th November Pepys wrote:

Pepys mentioned the matter to Sir John Bankes, one of the principal members of the Company, urging him to get the use of this flag regularised, and in the December of this same year he wrote to Bankes as follows:

Apparently the matter was adjusted to the satisfaction of Pepys, for the striped flag[331] continued to be used by the Company until the year 1824, when, on the question of its legal position being again raised, its use as an ensign was discontinued, though it remained in existence until 1863 on the Company's ships as a jack or signal flag[332].

The flags laid down for the merchant ships by the Proclamation of 1674 were confirmed by further Proclamations in July, 1694, and December, 1702, with the additional restriction that such ships were expressly forbidden to wear "any kind of pendant whatsoever." As these proclamations were addressed to all "loving subjects" they were presumably binding on the Scots as well as on the English, but the use of the St Andrew canton certainly persisted in the ships of the Scots navy, and therefore presumably in the merchant ships of Scotland.

On the legislative union between England and Scotland in 1707 a further Proclamation was issued, which contained a fundamental difference. In the Proclamation of 1674, 1694, and 1702 the merchant ships had been forbidden to use any other colours than "those usually worn," but they were not expressly ordered to wear any colours at all. In the Proclamation of 1707, under which the Union replaced the St George in the canton of the red ensign, a clause was inserted

They were further forbidden to wear "any Flags, Jacks, Pendants or Colours made in imitation of ours, or any kind of Pendant whatsoever, or any other ensign than the ensign described." This did not prohibit the use of the St George's jack on the bowsprit, which was expressly recognised by the King's Regulations for the navy[333] as being, together with the red ensign, the appropriate colours for a British merchant ship.

In consequence of the legislative union with Ireland, a proclamation was issued on 1st January, 1801, substituting the new form of the Union in the canton of the ensign, but leaving the existing regulations unaltered. The provision for the use of the St George's jack by merchant ships last appeared in the 1808 edition of the Regulations and Instructions relating to His Majesty's Service at Sea in the following terms:

How far such regulations, which in the preamble are expressly stated to be drawn up for the "Naval Service at Sea," can have been legally binding on the Mercantile Marine is a matter for lawyers to decide, but it seems probable that the merchant service did not generally observe the regulation as to the jack, for in the next edition (that of 1824) all reference to it is omitted. From that date the red ensign alone has been the legal national colours of a British merchant vessel. It must be displayed

(a) On a signal being made from one of H.M. ships or from a vessel under the command of an officer of the Royal Navy on full pay.

(b) On entering or leaving any foreign port.

(c) If the vessel is of 50 tons gross tonnage or more, on entering or leaving any British port.

Merchant ships commanded by officers on the retired list of the Royal Navy or by officers of the Royal Naval Reserve may, on certain conditions laid down in the King's Regulations, be allowed to wear a blue ensign instead of a red one.

No British merchantman may, under penalty of £500 and confiscation of the colours, wear any other "distinctive national colours," nor any other flags or pendants in any way resembling those of H.M. ships, but there is nothing in the Merchant Shipping Act to prevent any such ship from wearing any fancy flags that it likes—even if some covert disloyalty is intended thereby—provided that such flags are not "distinctively" national and do not imitate the flags of the navy, and that it displays the red ensign upon the proper occasions.

The law on the subject of the flags to be flown by British merchantmen was, as will have been seen, sufficiently explicit, and the flags allowed by no means inferior in dignity or traditional sentiment to those withheld; nevertheless, the merchant skipper, until a comparatively recent period which may be dated roughly as the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, seems to have taken an especial delight in attempting to evade the law. Attempts to fly the Union jack have already been sufficiently illustrated. Another idiosyncracy was the flying of the blue instead of the red ensign. St Lo dealt with this at Jamaica in 1728 by an ingenious device, that of using the Crown's right of impressment to deprive such ships of one of the most important members of the crew: "rather than be troubling their Lordships with complaints of taking them away, I have found out another expedient, which is to get a Carpenter or Caulker from them, so that I hope in a little time to bring them to better reason."

In 1819 the master of a ship in home waters who had persisted in flying a blue ensign and pendant although repeatedly fired at, was prosecuted by the Admiralty, but upon his appeal the prosecution was dropped with the hope that "it will be understood that any future violation of the law will be punished strictly." Two other ships were, in the following year, prosecuted for flying pendants, and in 1821 the attention of the Commanders-in-Chief was called to the existing regulations "relative to Colours to be worn by private ships which it has been apprehended have not been generally attended to."

Not long after this date the custom of flying at a masthead a "house" flag denoting the ownership of the vessel became general, and perhaps for this reason or because they were living in a more prosaic age the captains of merchantmen ceased to give further trouble by attempts to display illegal colours. There are now many hundreds of house flags[334] in existence, but nearly all of them have come into use since 1840. An older practice with some of the larger merchantmen, which seems to date from the early years of the eighteenth century, was to fly the arms of the town in which the master lived at the mizen, and the arms of the town where the freighter resided at the fore. Some passenger ships plying on regular lines (such as the cross-Channel steamers) fly at the fore the national flag of the country to and from which they sail.

The somewhat anomalous position of the ships of the East India Company, many of which were given Letters of Marque in order to regularise their position as combatants if they came into conflict with ships of native states (or possibly with those of other European powers) in Indian waters, has already been remarked. No trace can be found of any formal grant of the Company's flag, and it seems most probable that it was really the survivor of an early striped ensign such as many ships, men-of-war or merchant, wore in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth and the early part of the reign of James. There was, however, an early precedent of the grant of a special flag to specified merchantmen to denote a privileged position. In 1581 Elizabeth, anxious to encourage the trade then being opened up with Turkey, granted a Charter of Incorporation for a term of seven years to Sir Edward Osborn and three other merchants, who might add other Englishmen, not exceeding twelve in all, to their number. These were allowed "to set and place in the tops of their ships and other vessels the Arms of England with the red crosse over the same, as heretofore they have used the red crosse, any matter or thing to the contrary notwithstanding." On its expiry in 1588 this charter was not renewed, but in 1593 Osborn and others were incorporated in a company to be known as the Governor and Company of Merchants of the Levant, and they were "to set and place in the toppes of their ships or other vessels the Armes of England with the redde crosse in white over the same as heretofore they have used." It would appear from these words that the red cross in the original flag was bordered with white, although it is not so described in the earlier charter. The Charter of 1593 was found defective, and a new one was issued in 1601 which contained the same clause, the name of the company being changed to the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the Levant Seas." On the death of Elizabeth this charter lapsed, and it was not until the 14th December, 1605, that another charter was issued. This charter, which remained in force until 1825, omits all reference to the flag. Possibly James already had in mind the Union flag that was established early in the next year, and indeed the design of the Union flag is distinctly reminiscent of the old Levant Company's flag—the banner of Scotland taking the place of the Arms of England. The omission from this charter of any provision for a special flag cannot have been other than intentional, nevertheless the ships of the company seem to have continued to use the old flag in Levant waters, for in 1625 Sir Thomas Roe, then Ambassador to Turkey, issued a general proclamation "To all Captaynes, Maisters, pursers and officers of any English shipps and all other his Ma^tie Subjects serving or sailing in them within y^e Levant Seas," ordering "that from hence forth they, nor none of them presume to use or beare any other flagg or coulers than y^e usuall flagge and Red Crosse of England, or St Andrewe of Scotland, neither in the Levant Seas nor in any Port of the Grand Signior's Dominion, upon what pretence soever." From this time the "usual flag and Red Cross of England" became very prominent in those waters and gradually replaced the French flag as protector of the lives and goods of foreign merchants trading within the Sultan's dominions. The various capitulations by which this was effected were consolidated in 1675 by a Treaty of Commerce made between Mahomet IV and Charles II[335], which, among other things, provided "that the Merchants of Spain, Portugal, Ancona, Seville, Florence, Catalonia, and all sorts of Dutch and other foreign Merchants ... might always come under the Flag and Protection of the Ambassadors or Consuls of England."

There were other trading companies that, like the East India Company, had or assumed the right to fly a special flag, in this case probably only as a jack. One was the Guinea, or Africa, Company, the ships of which from the time of Charles II onwards flew a St George's flag with a chequered border of two rows of red and white squares. This practice probably originated with the third company, chartered in 1662, and of course expired on the dissolution of the fourth company in 1752. Another was the so-called Scottish East India Company which started its short life in 1695 and is best known from its disastrous attempt to colonise the Isthmus of Darien. Its emblem of the rising sun (Plate X, fig. 4) indicated the dawn of hopes that were doomed to an early eclipse.

Special forms of the red ensign may be flown by merchant ships of three of the British Dominions, viz. Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This privilege was first granted to Canada in the year 1892, the badge of Canada without the Crown (see Plate XII, fig. 7) being placed in the centre of the fly.

In 1899 merchant ships registered in New Zealand were authorised to wear a red ensign having in the fly four white stars, representing the constellation of the Southern Cross. In this connection it may be remarked that in 1834 the British resident in New Zealand proposed that the New Zealanders should have a national flag. Three patterns were sent over by the Governor of New South Wales, and by a narrow majority the chiefs voted for the one represented in Plate XII, fig. 1. New Zealand was then an independent country; in 1839 it was added to the British dominions and after the grant of its Constitution in 1852 this flag appears to have been dropped, to be subsequently revived by the Shaw Savill and Albion Shipping Company, which now uses it as a "house flag."

A red ensign for Australian merchant vessels was first approved in 1903. It had a six-pointed white star (indicating the six states) in the centre of the lower canton and five smaller stars, representing the Southern Cross, in the fly. In 1908 the large star under the Union had the number of its points increased to seven (see the similar blue ensign in Plate XII, fig. 3).

No other dominion or colony is at present allowed the privilege of "defacing" the red ensign, but any colonial merchant vessel is at liberty to carry, in addition to the red ensign, a flag containing the badge of the colony, provided that such a flag is not "distinctive national colours" (i.e. does not contain or imitate the Union).

A merchant ship commanded by a retired officer of the Royal Navy or by an officer of the Royal Naval Reserve may fly the blue ensign under Admiralty Warrant if the crew includes ten officers or men belonging to the Reserve. The formation of a reserve among officers of the merchant service was first authorised by Act of Parliament in 1861, and in the following year it was decided that a merchant ship commanded by such an officer might fly a blue ensign with a crown and the letters R.N.R. in the fly; the abolition of the squadronal colours of the navy in 1864, however, enabled the blue ensign undefaced by a device to be assigned to the Reserves, and the device was thereafter omitted.

(v) PLEASURE CRAFT

For the introduction into Great Britain of craft built solely for pleasure and large enough to navigate the open sea or the estuaries of large rivers we need look no further back than the restoration of Charles II. From the earlier years of the seventeenth century the wealthy inhabitants of the Netherlands had included among their recreations the sailing of specially designed boats upon their numerous waterways. With the presentation to Charles in 1660 of two of the Dutch yachts we may, for all practical purposes, date the inauguration of this form of recreation in England. The fashion set by the King and his brother gradually spread among the wealthier classes.

Except those belonging to the King, all such pleasure craft would legally form part of the mercantile marine, and in the absence of special permission to the contrary could only wear the flags appropriated to that service. Yet from an early date the owners attempted to appropriate to themselves some special distinction. The failure of the Governor of Dover in 1676 to obtain the King's permission to fly the Union jack on his private yacht has already been noticed. This failure did not deter others from assuming such a right. In 1686 the question of the liberty taken by private yachts to wear the King's jack without license came before the Navy Board, and Pepys, who was present, has left us the note upon the motives leading to such evasions of the law, which has been already considered in Chapter III (page 69).

The yachts belonging to James II (who reserved the Office of Lord High Admiral to himself throughout his reign) flew, in addition to the royal standard at the masthead and Union jack, a special red ensign, with St George's cross in the canton, and in the fly an anchor and cable surmounted by the royal crown.

The first attempt to democratise yachting and to form a club to facilitate its enjoyment came, oddly enough, from the Irish, a nation that has never, in spite of its natural advantages, shown any marked liking for the sea. Yet by the formation of the Cork Water Club in 1720 Ireland took a lead that was not followed in England for nearly a hundred years. The Club adopted as their distinctive flag the Union jack with the harp on a green escutcheon in the centre, as in the jack of the Protectorate; this escutcheon was also placed on the Union in the canton of their ensign. Dissolved in 1765, this Club was resuscitated in 1806, and was the progenitor of the existing Royal Cork Yacht Club.

The first corporate body of yachtsmen to be formed in England was the Royal Yacht Club (now the Royal Yacht Squadron) founded at Cowes in 1815, when the close of the long war with France rendered the Channel safe for such a form of amusement. As a distinctive flag, this Club chose a white ensign with the Union in the canton but without the St George's cross in the fly. For six years the Admiralty took no notice of the breach of the law involved in flying such a flag, but in 1821 the number of yachts had so increased that the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth drew attention to the fact that a large number of small craft were flying an unauthorised flag. He received instructions to enforce the law, and the Club had to content itself with the legal red ensign. In 1829, however, the Admiralty granted the yachts of the club permission to wear "a St George's or white ensign," and the club thereupon adopted the modern white ensign which its members still fly.

This was followed in 1831 by the grant of a blue ensign to the Royal Northern Yacht Club; a white ensign with "the Arms of Ireland" in the lower canton next the staff to the Royal Irish Yacht Club; and a formal grant of the red ensign with "the Union (with the harp and crown on a green field in the centre) in the corner" to the Royal Cork Yacht Club.

In 1832 a newly formed Irish club, the "Western Yacht Club," which had assumed a green ensign, approached the Admiralty with a view to the confirmation of this flag on the ground that "a white ensign has been granted to the 'Royal Yacht Club,' a red ensign to the 'Royal Cork,' a blue ensign to the 'Royal Northern,' and as the only unoccupied national flag we have assumed the green ensign[336]." They were informed "You may have as the flag for this Club either a red, white or blue ensign, with such device within as you may point out, but that their Lordships cannot sanction the introduction of a new colour to be worn by British ships." They then chose a white St George's ensign with "a crown in the centre surrounded with a wreath of shamrock."

There followed other grants of the white ensign, plain or with the St George's cross in the fly and with or without special badges.

In 1842 the Royal Yacht Squadron, moved by frequent complaints of the improper conduct in foreign waters of British yachts, erroneously supposed, from the fact of their having a white ensign, to belong to that club, asked that they might have "the sole permission to carry the white ensign," at the same time suggesting that the other clubs should have a blue one. The Admiralty acceded to this request and issued the following circular letter:

This letter was sent to the Royal Western, the Royal Thames, the Royal Southampton, the Royal Eastern and the Gibraltar Yacht Clubs and to the Wharncliffe Sailing Club, but from a misapprehension the Royal Western Yacht Club of Ireland, once incorporated with its English namesake, was overlooked. In 1853 this point was raised in Parliament, but no action was then taken. In 1858, however, the exemption of the Irish Club was again made a grievance by other clubs desiring the same privilege, and the warrant of the Irish Club was then cancelled. The outcry raised led to the papers connected with the grants of the white ensign being laid before the House of Commons in 1859[337].

From that date the privilege of flying the white ensign has remained the prerogative of the Royal Yacht Squadron, a privilege enhanced in 1864 by its becoming the distinctive ensign of the Royal Navy.

At the present day forty-four clubs have the privilege of flying the blue ensign, either plain or "defaced" with some distinctive badge, and eight are allowed to "deface" the red ensign with their special badge. Other clubs may fly only the ordinary red ensign of the Mercantile Marine.