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Flag cantons

Unions

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My hypothesis is that by 1777, when the US flag was adopted, some two centuries of English-British practice had led English-speaking mariners to assume that an ensign necessarily consisted of a field and a canton, and that the flag flown on the jack staff was of the same design as the canton of the ensign. As far as I can tell--and subject to correction from others, such as David Prothero and Chris Southworth who know this history better than I--this was the most usual practice in England even before the adoption of the Union Jack design in 1606--a cross of St. George at the jack staff, and an ensign of either striped or solid field with a canton of St. George at the stern, then later (for warships) the Union Jack at the jack staff and an ensign with a UNION JACK canton at the stern. See gb-hist.html#merch,

(It would be interesting to know if Scottish ships pre-1707 wore a St. Andrew jack along with the Scottish red ensign.

Over time, with the full introduction of the Union Jack as the device in the upper hoist of British ensigns, the term "union" became synonymous with what we would call the "canton." Thus the term for an inverted ensign, "union down."

The language of the resolution adopting the US flag on 14 June 1777 is, I think, indicative of these assumptions and this terminology regarding the design of an ensign. Note that the resolution says the flag consists of 13 stripes, alternating red and white, and that "the union" will be 13 white stars on a blue field. There is no indication of where "the union" is to be located (or of the direction of the stripes), which many modern vexillologists have taken to be a case of unclear legal drafting. I doubt that it was unclear at all to the people who had to implement the law--I believe they knew perfectly well that "the union" was the part of the flag in the upper hoist. And my contention is that they also knew perfectly well that the proper design of a jack was "the union," because for over 200 years that had been how things were done. And that's why, apparently without any further legislative or regulatory enactment, US ships began using a jack consisting of a blue field with white stars; after all, didn't the law say "the union" was thirteen white stars on a blue field? What further authority was needed? Such jacks are to be seen in contemporary ship paintings as early as the late 1780s.

As further evidence of the assumption that a ship's jack should match the "union" of the ensign, I'd cite the example of the U.S. Revenue Marine. As shown in a painting of the revenue cutter Alexander Hamilton in 1840, reprinted in Bruno Cianci's new book on U.S. Coast Guard Flags, "Due secoli sui mari," the U.S. Revenue Marine used as a jack the same design--the US coat of arms in blue on a white field--as that of the canton of the revenue ensign prescribed in 1799. This jack eventually transmogrified itself into the modern U.S. Coast Guard color.

By the way, I think the same process worked for the design of warship pennants. A British warship