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The STRIPED FLAG of the EAST INDIA COMPANY, and its CONNEXION with the AMERICAN "STARS and STRIPES"

Article by Sir Charles Fawcett

by António Martins

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The article reproduced below is from the Mariners Mirror dated October 1937 where Charles Fawcett published an article discussing the suggestion that the flag of the East India Company influenced the design of the Grand Union Flag at great length. The article is entitled :
The STRIPED FLAG of the EAST INDIA COMPANY, and its CONNEXION with the AMERICAN "STARS and STRIPES"

The article discusses the many different possibilities and likelihoods for the design of the Grand Union flag. Although the article provides no definite proof of a connection it provides enough evidence and well formed argument to conclude that it is most likely that there is a direct connection.

Neil Kimber, 28 December 2002

THE MARINER'S MIRROR WHEREIN MAY BE DISCOVERED HIS ART, CRAFT & MYSTERY after the manner of their use in all ages and among all Nations Vol. XXIII. No. 4 OCTOBER 1937 THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR NAUTICAL RESEARCH, VOLUME TWENTY-THREE M-CM-XXXVII, CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS MCMXXXVII

The STRIPED FLAG of the EAST INDIA COMPANY, and its CONNEXION with the AMERICAN "STARS and STRIPES"
By Sir Charles Fawcett

As Editor of the India Office series The English Factories in India I have become interested in the red and white stripes of the flag of the East India Company and the question whether they are the origin of the similar stripes in the American flag. I venture to give the result of my research on this topic in these pages, as it will, I think, be of some interest to readers of The Mariner's Mirror, and no one else seems to have written about it in previous issues. Professor Geoffrey Callender, the Director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, has informed me that the late Mr W. G. Perrin contemplated doing so, but had not completed his researches when he died. He has given a good deal of the history of the flag in his book British Flags (Cambridge University Press, 1922); but the only previous references to it in The Mariner's Mirror are a few short notes on pp. 190 and 221 of vol. I and on p. 63 of vol. III, which chiefly relate to the varying number of the stripes.

In the seventeenth century the flag had, as stated by Perrin (loc. cit. p. 130), generally from nine to thirteen alternate red and white stripes, the odd numbers being red; and it was to this that its nick-name of "John Company's gridiron" is due. The top stripes were, however, broken by a canton at the upper corner next the staff, containing the red cross of St George on a white field (see Perrin's Plate IX, No. 6). Nothing about its use, or intended use, has been traced in the early records of the Company, though special attention to this point was paid by my predecessor, Sir William Foster, who has kindly helped me by putting his notes on the subject at my disp