reach has always been considered legitimate, but it is not allowable to
engage, or to commit any hostile act, under them. While it is considered
legitimate to mislead, however, it is not legitimate to cheat. An
example of what might appear to be a distinction without a difference is
afforded by a case which occurred in 1783, when the French ship
_Sybille_, a powerful 36-gun frigate, was sighted off Cape Henry by the
_Hussar_ of 28 guns. The _Sybille_ had, a few days before, had a drawn
fight with one of our ships of the same force, and, in consequence of
injuries she had then received, had been dismasted in a puff of wind,
and was under jury masts. As she was unable to chase the _Hussar_, she
sought to entice her alongside, in order to take her by boarding, and
accordingly she hoisted at the peak the French ensign under the English,
as if she had been captured. All this was legitimate, and the _Hussar_
might or might not have been deceived by it. But the French captain did
something more. He hoisted in the main shrouds an English ensign
reversed, and tied in a weft or loop. Now this was a well-known signal
of distress--an appeal to a common humanity, which no English officer
was ever known to disregard, and the _Hussar_ closed at once. But
fortunately her crew were at quarters, and the _Sybille_, hauling down
the English flag at the peak and hoisting the French above, endeavoured
to run her on board. Her extreme rolling, however, steadied by no
sufficient sail, exposed her bottom, and several shots from the _Hussar_
went through her very bilge. By this time another of our ships, the
_Centurion_ of 50 guns, had come up, and the _Sybille_ struck her
flag--the reversed ensign with its weft, so dishonourably hoisted,
remaining in the main shrouds. The English officer who took possession
sent the French captain on board the _Hussar_, and he presented his
sword to Captain Russell on the quarterdeck. Russell took the sword,
broke it across, and threw it on the deck; and sending the Frenchman
below, kept him in close confinement in the hold till his arrival in
port some days later.[42]
[42] Laughton's _Heraldry of the Sea_.
I may mention another case where a legitimate ruse was successfully
practised on an enemy by our great naval commander, Lord Cochrane. It
occurred in the early part of his brilliant career, when he was cruising
in the Mediterranean in his little brig the _Speedy_. 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.
Perceiving the supposed Spanish merchantman, Lord Cochrane at once gave
chase, and he only discovered his mistake when his formidable antagonist
opened her ports and showed her teeth. At the same time the Spaniard
lowered a boat to go on board the _Speedy_ and see what she was.
Discovery and capture were apparently now unavoidable, but Lord Cochrane
was equal to the occasion. Hoisting the yellow flag--the dreaded signal
of sickness and quarantine--he made straight for the frigate, and,
having dressed a petty officer in Danish uniform, on the gangway, he
ordered him to hail the boat with the intimation that they were out just
two days from Algiers, where it was well known the plague was then
violently raging. This was enough. The boat pulled back, and the frigate
at once filled and proceeded on her course.
It was a narrow escape; yet the crew of the _Speedy_ complained loudly
that they had not been allowed to fight the frigate! They had been
admirably trained, and had implicit confidence in their brave commander,
and thought he was equal to anything. Lord Cochrane was not a man to
disregard murmurs uttered in such a direction, and he told them that if
they really wanted a fight they would get it with the first enemy they
came across, whatever she might be. They had not long to wait before
they fell in with a large Spanish zebec, the _Gamo_, which, to the
astonishment of the big ship, Lord Cochrane immediately attacked. A
fight with the guns could not have lasted long, for the Spanish ship
carried 30 heavy guns with a crew of upwards of 300 men, while the
_Speedy_ had only 14 four-pounders and a crew of 54 all told. Lord
Cochrane, therefore, notwithstanding this immense disparity of force,
determined, as his only chance, to board the frigate, and this he
succeeded in doing, taking his entire crew with him and leaving only the
surgeon at the wheel. A deadly hand-to-hand conflict ensued, when, just
as his small band were nearly overpowered, Lord Cochrane ordered one of
his men to haul down the Spanish colours. This was promptly done, and
the Spaniards--their commander having been killed--thinking that their
own officers had struck, ceased fighting, and Lord Cochrane became
master of the frigate. How to take care of his numerous prisoners was
not a small difficulty, but he succeeded in doing so, and brought his
prize safely into Port Mahon. It was one of the most brilliant affairs
in the glorious life of this great seaman.
Another interesting example of an enemy's ship being taken in
consequence of her colours being hauled down, not by her own officers
but by the party assailing, occurred at a much earlier period in an
action between the British and Dutch fleets off the English coast. A
runaway boy--Thomas Hopson--an apprentice to a tailor in the Isle of
Wight, had just before come on board the admiral's ship as a volunteer.
In the midst of the action he asked a sailor how long the fight would
continue, and was told that it would only cease when the flag of the
Dutch admiral was hauled down. The boy did not understand about the
striking of colours, but he thought if the hauling down of the flag
would stop the fight it might not be difficult to do. As the ships were
engaged yard-arm and yard-arm, and veiled in smoke, Hopson at once ran
up the shrouds, laid out on the mizen-yard of his own ship, and having
gained that of the Dutch admiral he speedily reached the
top-gallant-mast head and possessed himself of the Dutch flag, with
which he succeeded in returning to his own deck. 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 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. This has given rise to an order
that national flags are not to be used for decoration or in dressing
ships. This order has reference more particularly to two flags, which
are in ordinary use as signal flags. One of these is the French
tricolour, but with the red and blue transposed; the other is the Dutch
flag turned upside down, and there are two pendants to match. An
unintentional departure from this rule gave rise to some unpleasantness
on one occasion in the early part of this century. On the 23d of April,
1819, the English frigate _Euryalus_, lying at St. Thomas in the West
Indies, had dressed ship in honour of St. George's day--the fete of the
Prince Regent--and in doing so had made use of the blue, white, and red
flag, which four years before had been the national flag of France. A
three-coloured pennant hung down from the spanker boom and trailed in
the water, and another three-coloured flag was at the lower end of the
line pendant from the flying boom. This was observed by the French
Rear-admiral Duperre, who was there in the _Gloire_, and he demanded and
received apologies for what he conceived to be an insult offered to a
flag which had lately been the flag of France, and under which he and
many of his officers and men had served.[43]
[43] _Heraldry of the Sea_, p. 28.
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 excited the indignation of an old
pensioner, John Campbell, who had been a sergeant in the 71st
Highlanders--the regiment of Campbell of Lochnell--and he went to the
innkeeper and demanded that matters should be put right. As no attention
was paid to his remonstrance, he then and there cut down the French
flag, and dared the innkeeper to hoist it again in that manner. The
residents in Oban were so pleased with Campbell's spirited conduct that
they presented him with a silver-headed stick.
In gun practice it is also held to be an insult to take as a mark the
flag of another nation, and sometimes unintentional offence has been
given through mistakes about the flags in such circumstances. For the
following I am indebted to a distinguished naval officer who was
cognizant of the circumstances. Some twenty years ago, when the French
had an army of occupation in Syria, and their fleet and ours were lying
amicably together at Beyrout, some of the English ships having occasion
to practise the men with their rifles, put out their respective
targets--which generally consisted of bits of old flags fastened to a
stick, and stuck in a small cask anchored off at the required
distance--and commenced firing. Presently a boat with a superior officer
was seen pulling in hot haste from the French flagship. It afterwards
transpired that the boat was conveying a polite request that the English
would refrain from firing on the French flag--the officer at the same
time pointing to an exceedingly dirty piece of bunting which was being
riddled by the bullets from one of her Majesty's ships. "That's not the
French flag," was the answer of the English. "Yes, I assure you," the
Frenchman replied, "we are nearer than you are, and can see the colours.
And, pardon me," he added, "another of your ships is at the present
moment, in this Turkish port, firing on the Turkish flag"--pointing at
the same time to another target, consisting of a faded bit of red
bunting. Inquiries were made, and what had been taken for the Tricolour
was found to be a piece of an old condemned Union Jack, that had
unfortunately been nailed on to the staff without due regard to the
position of the colours, while the so-called Turkish flag was discovered
to be a fragment of an old English red ensign.
To the same naval officer I am indebted for the following amusing
incident, which I am glad to give in his own words, as he was personally
concerned in it. "About the same time," he writes, "another occurrence
of the same kind took place at Larnaca, in Cyprus. It happily ended
well, but at one time it looked quite serious. 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. It was about the usual size of such
articles, and as it had been bought at Malta while disturbances were
pending at Naples, it had the Italian colours, green, white, and red,
together with a pendant, printed on it, and on the white part some
patriotic sentences in Italian. The whole presented an ancient and faded
appearance, but the gunner accepted it with thanks.
"So it was duly nailed on a staff stuck into a small cask, and anchored
about 600 yards to seaward. After the firing from the howitzers was
finished the men were ordered to fire on it with rifles, which for a
time they did. While this was going on a small French brig happened to
be lying in the roads, and during the forenoon a boat was observed
pulling from her in the direction of the target, but it did not venture
very close; the firing was not suspended, and nothing further was
thought about it. Before going to dinner in the middle of the day, a
boat was sent to examine the target to see if it would float, as it was
intended to continue the practice in the afternoon, and although it was
reported to have been knocked about a good deal, it was thought it might
remain afloat as long as it would be required, and so it was left. About
an hour afterwards, however, it disappeared, and went to the bottom.
"The lieutenant, who had been weary with his work and had gone to bed
early, was much astonished at being sent for by the captain about
midnight. A formal despatch from our consul had come on board, inclosing
a communication from the French representative giving a detailed account
of what was described as a gross insult to the French flag, perpetrated
by H.M.S. ----, and demanding all kinds of apologies. The prime mover in
the affair, it appeared, was a certain captain Napoleon something, the
commander of the little brig. His story was that he had seen with
indignation the flag of his country--in size six feet square by his
account--carried out by an English man-of-war boat, and deliberately
fired upon. He and his crew, he said, had got into their boat determined
to rescue the desecrated ensign, 'even at the risk of their lives,' but
on getting near they had thought better of it, and pulled ashore
instead. Here he had collected all the French residents he could get,
whom he harangued, and having persuaded them that the scarcely visible
speck was in truth their national flag, he got them to sign a strongly
worded protest, and go with it along with him in a body to the French
consul. Reparation, they said, must be made--the insulted flag must be
saluted. So great was the excitement and so plausible the story that the
French consul, pending negotiations, sent to Beyrout requiring the
immediate presence of a French man-of-war. In fact there was all the
groundwork of a very pretty row. Meantime the cause of all the commotion
was lying at the bottom of the sea, with five or six fathoms of water
over it. A written explanation of the circumstance was sent from the
ship, and a meeting arranged for next day at the English consulate; and
in the meantime a number of boats were sent early in the morning to try
and fish up the bone of contention, as without it there was only the
English word against the French. At the consulate there was a stormy
meeting--much hard swearing and vociferation on the part of the French
captain and his crew, with the affidavits of any number of respectable
French residents, formally drawn up and signed. Everybody was getting
very angry, and prospect of an amicable settlement there was none, when
in a momentary lull the English lieutenant asked the French captain--who
had for the fiftieth time declared that it _was_ a French flag, and six
feet square at least--'whether it was likely that he knew more about it
than the marine who had blown his nose with it for the last six months.'
This in some measure restored good humour. The meeting separated in a
more friendly spirit than had at first seemed possible, and when, on the
following day, a lucky cast of the grapnel brought to the surface the
innocent cause of the disturbance, there was an end of the matter. Torn
by bullets, draggled and wet as it was, the wretched handkerchief was
borne in triumph to the French consulate, and of course there was no
more to be said. The consul made the proper _amende_, and the
man-of-war, which actually appeared from Beyrout a few hours afterwards
to vindicate the honour of the French flag, returned to her anchorage."
I shall just add one more incident of the same kind, for which I am
indebted to another naval officer. In 1879 an English corvette visited
Tahiti. The island, being under French protection, flies a special flag,
and as it is one which is not supplied to English men-of-war, it is
usual, when it is necessary for them to salute, to borrow a protectorate
flag from the authorities. On the occasion in question, accordingly, the
flag was sent off by the governor's aide-de-camp (a naval officer) on
the evening of the corvette's arrival at Papeite, and the flag having
been hoisted on the following morning, the salute was duly fired. But
the display of the flag caused a terrible commotion on shore. On such
occasions the whole population turns out to see the salute, and the
beach of the beautiful land-locked, or rather reef-inclosed, harbour was
crowded with French and Tahitians watching the corvette, which was
moored close under the town. The cause of the commotion was that the
flag had been improperly made, so that in hoisting it the French ensign,
by pure inadvertence, appeared underneath that of Tahiti. The
indignation of the French was great, and they hastened to complain to
the governor that their flag had been deliberately insulted by her
Majesty's ship. The mistake, fortunately, lay entirely with the
authorities on shore. It was only on hauling it down that the officer in
command found it had been caused by the flag being improperly
constructed, the technical explanation being that the distance line had
been sewed in, the wrong way, with the taggle towards the bottom of the
flag--a very trifling thing in itself, but which, if unexplained, might
have led to serious consequences. Of course the flag was immediately
sent to the governor with the explanation, and there was an end of it.
So much for naval flags.
FLAGS OF THE BRITISH ARMY.
I have already noticed incidentally some of the flags used in the armies
of England in early times. Those used in the latter part of the
thirteenth century, and early in the fourteenth, were, besides those of
the knights and bannerets, the Royal Standard and the banners of St.
George, of St. Edmund, and of St. Edward. Subsequently various changes
took place which it is unnecessary to follow.
At present in the British army every regiment of infantry has two flags.
They are both made of silk, in this differing from sea flags, which are
usually made of bunting. With the exception of the Foot Guards, the
first or Queen's colours of every regiment is the Union or National
Flag, with the imperial crown in the centre, and the number of the
regiment beneath in gold. The second or regimental colours are, with
certain exceptions, of the colour of the facing of the regiment, with
the Union in the upper corner. The second colours of all regiments bear
the devices or badges and distinctions which have been conferred by
royal authority. Fig. 28 is a representation of the regimental or second
colours of the first battalion of the 24th Regiment, for which I am
indebted to the courtesy of Sir Albert Woods. It will serve as an
example of the regimental colours of other regiments. The pole, it will
be observed, is surmounted by the royal crest, and this is common to all
regiments carrying colours. The ground of the flag is grass green. The
crown and wreath are "proper," that is of the natural colours. The
scrolls are gold with black letters.
[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Regimental Colours of First Battalion of
24th Regiment.]
The first or royal colours of the Foot Guards are crimson, and bear
certain special distinctions besides those authorized for the second
colours--the whole surmounted by the imperial crown. The second, or
regimental colours, of the Foot Guards is the Union, with one of the
ancient badges conferred by royal authority. The first battalion of the
Scots Fusilier Guards possesses the high distinction of carrying on
their first colours the royal arms of Scotland.
[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Queen's Colours of the First Battalion of
24th Regiment.]
The colours of infantry are as a rule carried by the two junior
lieutenants, and our military annals present many examples of devoted
heroism by the standard-bearers in defence of their charge. Among such
incidents few are more interesting than the loss and recovery of the
Queen's colours of the first battalion of the 24th Regiment in the
African campaign of 1878-79, to which I have already referred. It will
be recollected that Lieutenants Melville and Coghill, after crossing the
river Tugela with the Queen's colours, were overtaken and attacked by
overwhelming numbers and shot down. They died bravely, revolvers in
hand, but their pursuers failed to get possession of their precious
charge--the colours having been found near them when the bodies were
recovered. The Queen was much affected by this incident, and bestowed on
the young heroes after death the highest distinction for valour in her
power--the Victoria cross. On the arrival of the colours in England the
Queen expressed a wish to see them, and they were taken to Osborne,
where her Majesty tied on them a small wreath of immortelles as a mark
of her deep sense of the heroism of the two young officers who gave
their lives to save the flag. Fig. 29 shows the colours in the state in
which they were, when presented to the Queen, with the wreath placed
upon them by her Majesty.
The colours of the second battalion of the 24th had been left in camp
when the troops advanced to meet the Zulus, and they were consequently
captured. No trace of them could be found till some time afterwards when
the pole with its crown was recovered by a party of the 17th Lancers in
a Zulu kraal near Ulundi. This remnant continued to be carried by the
regiment for upwards of a year, when new colours were presented to them
at Gibraltar on behalf of the Queen by Lord Napier of Magdala. The old
colours, or rather their pole with the crown, were first trooped. The
new colours were then uncovered, and, after consecration,
presented--Lord Napier stating that her Majesty knew very well that the
flag had not been lost through any default of the battalion, but only in
consequence of their having been placed in camp when the battalion went
to the front under the general commanding.
The presentation of new colours with the accompanying consecration
service is an interesting ceremony. As the form may not be generally
known, I shall describe a recent one when new colours were presented by
the Prince of Wales to the first battalion of the 23d Regiment (the
Royal Welsh Fusiliers) on their embarkation for India. It is specially
interesting in connection with the history of the old ragged colours
which were then superseded. They had been presented by the late Prince
Consort thirty-one years before, and in the Crimea they were the first
which were planted on the heights of the Alma. Two lieutenants were
successively shot while holding them, and they were finally seized by
Sergeant O'Connor, who, though wounded, held them aloft and rallied the
regiment. For this service he was decorated with the Victoria cross.
Shortly afterwards he received his commission, and subsequently he
became colonel of the battalion. On the recent arrival of the troops at
Portsmouth they were drawn up on the military recreation ground, and the
Prince and Princess of Wales having taken their place at the saluting
point, the regiment marched past, headed by the goat which always
accompanies it. The old colours were then trooped and conveyed to the
rear, and three sides of a square having been formed, with a pyramid of
the drums in the centre, the new colours were uncased. The royal party
then advanced, and the senior chaplain of the regiment read the
Consecration service. The Queen's colours and the regimental colours
were then handed to the prince, and he presented them to the two
lieutenants who received them kneeling. The prince having spoken a few
appropriate words, and the colonel having replied, the colours were
saluted by the whole regiment. Another march past, and the presentation
of the officers to the prince, concluded the ceremony.