The badges of the offices referred to in the proclamation of 1694 were as follows:
Navy Office. An anchor without cable in pale, with two smaller anchors on each side of the shank.
Ordnance Office. This badge was similar to that now used by the War Office ([Plate XI], 7), but the colour of the shield appears to have been originally red with a yellow chief.
Victualling Office. Two anchors with cables in saltire.
Customs. A castle gate. A regal crown was substituted for this in 1817. From that date until the Coastguard Service was transferred to the Admiralty in 1856 all vessels engaged in prevention of smuggling under the Customs, Excise and Admiralty flew red ensigns and pendants with this crown upon them.
Transport Office. A plain anchor.
In 1701 the Admiralty complained to the King that the Governors of the plantations—the English Colonies of North America and the West Indies—were in the habit of authorising certain merchant ships, to which they gave commissions, to wear the colours of the king's ships. This the Governors claimed to do in virtue of their Vice-Admiralty commissions and because they conceived
it necessary for the security of ships sent out by them for H.M. Service, as well as for the honour of H.M. Commissions that these ships be authorised to bear such colours as may distinguish them from ordinary merchants' ships and other common trading vessels.
Presumably these ships, which certainly engaged in "common trade," were also employed on protection and police duties that would normally have been performed by ships of the Royal navy, had such ships been present there in sufficient numbers. On the 31st July of the same year an Order in Council was issued directing such ships to wear a jack with a white escutcheon[324] in the centre, and forbidding them to wear the ordinary Union jack. I have not met with this special form of jack at any later date, and it seems probable that the use of these colonial hired ships was discontinued after Benbow arrived in these waters in the late autumn of that year, though an Article providing for the use of the jack appeared some years after in the Instructions issued to the Governors of these colonies. It might seem that these vessels should be classed as hired men-of-war or as privateers, but the memorial of the Admiralty to the Council places them in the category of "those employed by the Officers of the Navy, Ordnance, Victualling and others."
After the disappearance of this jack there were no special distinguishing flags for colonial vessels until 1866, when it was laid down that ships in the public service of a colony might fly the blue ensign with the distinguishing badge of the colony.