A special distinguishing flag for privateers was first provided in the Royal Proclamation issued in July, 1694, which ordained that vessels receiving "Commissions of Letters of Mart or Reprisals" should wear, in addition to the St George's flag at the masthead and the red ensign with canton of St George at the stern, "a Red Jack with the Union Jack described in a Canton of the upper corner thereof next the staff"—the flag that Pepys in 1687 called the Budgee jack—which was in fact of the same design as the red ensign adopted in 1707, though apparently the canton occupied a larger proportion of the area of the flag in the jack than in the ensign[321].
Despite this precise direction, the privateer Instructions issued against France and Spain in December, 1704, contain the same instructions as those of 1693 quoted above, which presuppose that these vessels would fly the Union jack and pendant, which the Proclamation of 1694 had forbidden—but indeed, this muddle-headed attitude is not uncommon in official instructions. It is clear that privateers did carry pendants, for Woodes Rogers relates that he was ordered to strike his pendant by the 'Arundel' in August, 1708, "which we immediately did, all private commissioned ships being obliged by their Instructions to pay that respect to all her Majesty's ships and fortifications." The Distinction Jack of 1694 (subject to the necessary modification of the Union in 1801) remained the distinguishing flag of a privateer until privateering was abolished in 1856.
[(iii) PUBLIC SHIPS FOR USES OTHER THAN WAR]
The first suggestion that public ships which were not men-of-war should wear some distinctive flag is found in the Sub Notes about Flags and Colours drawn up by Pepys about the year 1687. He writes:
And here above all it is to be reflected on what distinction is to be made (as to the wearing of the Union Flag) between the King's own Ships, great or small, and hired ones, either as men-of-war (many of which both at Home and in the Plantations have been made up of hired Merchant Men) or for lower uses, as little as Victuallers, Water Ships, Store Ships, Pressing boats, Transporters etc. Wherein is to be considered whether if it be wholly necessary even in some of these occasions, as well as those of the Custom House, Green Cloth &c. some kind of distinction-flag might not be found sufficient to answer all the ends suggested for wearing the Jack Flag, without prostituting that to such low uses and ready insults[322], which so much deference is expected to by us from the ships of foreign Princes and States of the greatest force and rate.
The Revolution of 1688 put an end to Pepys' reforming activities, and no steps were taken to distinguish such ships until 1694, when a Royal Proclamation issued 12th July provided that
Such Ships and Vessels as shall be employed for Their Majesties' Service by the Principal Officers and Commissioners of Their Majesties' Navy, the Principal Officers of T.M. Ordnance, the Commissioners for Victualling T.M. Navy, the Commissioners for T.M. Customs, and the Commissioners for Transportation for T.M. Services, relating particularly to those Offices shall wear a Red Jack with the Union Jack in a Canton at the upper corner thereof next the staff, as aforesaid, and in the other part of the said Jack shall be described the Seal used in the respective Offices aforesaid by which the said ships and vessels shall be employed.
An Order in Council of 19th November in the same year provided further that "boats imployed in the service of the Generall Post Office be permitted to carry colours to distinguish them from other boats, and that in the said Colours there be represented a man on horseback blowing a Post horne," and from later papers in the same year it appears that the intention was that this device should be placed in the fly of the red jack, like the seals of the other government departments.
The proclamations of 1702 and 1707 confirmed the use of the red jack with the seal of office, but the King's Regulations of 1731 introduced a slight variation by providing that the seal might be placed in the body of the jack or ensign; the Regulations of 1806 completed the transfer by directing that the seal should be described "in the fly of the ensign," and the Regulations of 1844, not content with this, provided that the seal or badges should be placed "in the centre of both Ensign and Jack."
In July, 1864, the colour of the Ensign was altered to blue, and the red jack became an Union jack with a white border, both with the seals or badges as before, but the introduction of the "white bordered Jack" into this clause of the Order in Council appears to have been a slip, for the Addenda to the Regulations published in 1868 specified that the jack was to be of the same design as before but blue, like the ensign, and thus it remains; the difference between the jack and the ensign being that the former is smaller and square[323], instead of oblong in the proportion of two to one.