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 fête 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 Duperré, 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."