The naval jack
A naval jack is a small flag flown from the jackstaff at the bow of a warship, and in the Royal Navy it is the Union Flag, a design in continuous use since 1801. The jack is the one flag that marks the head of the ship, it is hauled up at sunrise and hauled down at sunset, and it is a separate flag from the White Ensign that flies from the mast. For a destroyer such as HMS Cossack, the jack was the daily emblem at the bow, and it tied the ship's name to the crew that sailed her.
Name memorabilia of Royal Navy destroyers is the body of small flags, fittings, and keepsakes that a crew kept to identify and remember their ship. Flags of the Royal Navy are the national flags and ensigns that mark a ship's nationality and service. The white, blue and red ensigns are the 3 national ensigns of the United Kingdom, and the Royal Navy flies the white one. Royal Navy destroyer classes form the lineage that gives each hull its name, and the jack is the flag that carried that name at the bow.
The design of the Royal Navy jack
The design of the Royal Navy jack is the Union Flag, and it combines 3 crosses on a single field. The crosses are:
- The red cross of St George on white, for England.
- The white diagonal cross of St Andrew on blue, for Scotland.
- The red diagonal cross of St Patrick, for Ireland.
The current design has flown since 1801, and the table below traces the 4 stages of the flag from its first issue to its final correction. The flag is a compact design, and the blue field of St Andrew is the largest area, with the red and white crosses set over it.
| Year | Design | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 1606 | First Union Flag | The crosses of St George and St Andrew were combined for the united crowns of England and Scotland. |
| 1707 | Union Flag of Great Britain | The 2 crosses were redrawn for the political union of England and Scotland. |
| 1801 | Union Flag of the United Kingdom | The red diagonal cross of St Patrick was added when Ireland entered the union. |
| 1921 | Corrected Union Flag | The 1801 design was redrawn to remove an asymmetry in the diagonal cross. |
The jackstaff of a destroyer
The jackstaff of a destroyer is the short vertical staff fixed at the bow, just ahead of the forecastle, from which the jack is flown. On a warship the jackstaff stands at the stem, and it is shorter than the mast that carries the ensign. A destroyer such as HMS Cossack carried the jackstaff at the head of the ship, so that the Union Flag sat at the very front of the hull as the ship made way. The staff is a fixed fitting, not a spar, and it is stepped into the deck near the stem so that it can carry the jack even when the bow is the lowest point of the ship in a following sea. The position of the jackstaff at the stem is fixed by the design of the ship, and a destroyer of the C class carried it in the same place as her sisters, so that the jack marked the bow of every ship in the class in the same way.
Flying the jack from sunrise to sunset
The jack is flown from sunrise to sunset, and the daily routine of hauling it up and down is a mark of a warship under commission. The jack is hauled up at dawn and hauled down at dusk, and it is not flown at night. When the ship is under way, the jack flies at the bow, and when the ship is alongside or at anchor, the jack is hauled down. The 2 states, flying and hauled down, follow the motion of the ship rather than the time of day, and the crew treats the jack as the daily emblem of the vessel. The hauling up of the jack at dawn is a deliberate act, and the crew regards it as the moment the ship takes on its full identity for the day. The rule is the same for every warship, and a destroyer kept it without change from her first commission to her last.
The jack and the ensign
The jack and the ensign are 2 different flags, and confusing them is the most common mistake about the flags of a warship. The jack is the small flag at the bow, and the ensign is the larger national flag flown from the mast. In the Royal Navy the ensign is the White Ensign, a white field with the Union Flag in the canton, and it marks the ship as a warship of the United Kingdom. The 3 national ensigns of the country are:
- The White Ensign, flown by the Royal Navy.
- The Blue Ensign, flown by merchant ships with the Union Flag in the canton.
- The Red Ensign, flown by merchant ships and not used by the navy.
The jack and the ensign share the Union Flag at the head, but they differ in size, position, and the rule that governs when each is flown.
The jack and the name of the ship
The jack and the name of the ship are tied together at the bow, because the jack is the flag that marks the head of the vessel that carries a given name. A destroyer's name is painted on the hull and recorded in the books, but the jack is the moving emblem that carried the ship's identity while she was under way. In the lineage of the destroyer classes, each hull in a class shared the design of the jack that flew at her bow, even as the names of the individual ships differed. The jack did not change from ship to ship within a class, and that is what made it a stable emblem of the class as a whole.
The jack as name memorabilia
The jack as name memorabilia is the flag that carried the ship's name at the bow, and it is the object a crew kept to remember the ship after it was paid off. A destroyer's name lived in several objects at once: the name painted on the hull, the name in the rating books, and the jack that flew the ship's colours at the stem. When a ship such as HMS Cossack was decommissioned, the crew and the association formed around her kept the memory of the name, and the jack was the daily emblem that tied the name to the vessel. The record of which crew served on which ship, and which ship carried which name, is what the name memorabilia of the destroyer classes preserves, and the jack is the flag at the centre of that record.