(b) On entering or leaving any foreign port.
(c) If the vessel is of 50 tons gross tonnage or more, on entering or leaving any British port.
Merchant ships commanded by officers on the retired list of the Royal Navy or by officers of the Royal Naval Reserve may, on certain conditions laid down in the King's Regulations, be allowed to wear a blue ensign instead of a red one.
No British merchantman may, under penalty of £500 and confiscation of the colours, wear any other "distinctive national colours," nor any other flags or pendants in any way resembling those of H.M. ships, but there is nothing in the Merchant Shipping Act to prevent any such ship from wearing any fancy flags that it likes—even if some covert disloyalty is intended thereby—provided that such flags are not "distinctively" national and do not imitate the flags of the navy, and that it displays the red ensign upon the proper occasions.
The law on the subject of the flags to be flown by British merchantmen was, as will have been seen, sufficiently explicit, and the flags allowed by no means inferior in dignity or traditional sentiment to those withheld; nevertheless, the merchant skipper, until a comparatively recent period which may be dated roughly as the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, seems to have taken an especial delight in attempting to evade the law. Attempts to fly the Union jack have already been sufficiently illustrated. Another idiosyncracy was the flying of the blue instead of the red ensign. St Lo dealt with this at Jamaica in 1728 by an ingenious device, that of using the Crown's right of impressment to deprive such ships of one of the most important members of the crew: "rather than be troubling their Lordships with complaints of taking them away, I have found out another expedient, which is to get a Carpenter or Caulker from them, so that I hope in a little time to bring them to better reason."
In 1819 the master of a ship in home waters who had persisted in flying a blue ensign and pendant although repeatedly fired at, was prosecuted by the Admiralty, but upon his appeal the prosecution was dropped with the hope that "it will be understood that any future violation of the law will be punished strictly." Two other ships were, in the following year, prosecuted for flying pendants, and in 1821 the attention of the Commanders-in-Chief was called to the existing regulations "relative to Colours to be worn by private ships which it has been apprehended have not been generally attended to."
Not long after this date the custom of flying at a masthead a "house" flag denoting the ownership of the vessel became general, and perhaps for this reason or because they were living in a more prosaic age the captains of merchantmen ceased to give further trouble by attempts to display illegal colours. There are now many hundreds of house flags[334] in existence, but nearly all of them have come into use since 1840. An older practice with some of the larger merchantmen, which seems to date from the early years of the eighteenth century, was to fly the arms of the town in which the master lived at the mizen, and the arms of the town where the freighter resided at the fore. Some passenger ships plying on regular lines (such as the cross-Channel steamers) fly at the fore the national flag of the country to and from which they sail.
The somewhat anomalous position of the ships of the East India Company, many of which were given Letters of Marque in order to regularise their position as combatants if they came into conflict with ships of native states (or possibly with those of other European powers) in Indian waters, has already been remarked. No trace can be found of any formal grant of the Company's flag, and it seems most probable that it was really the survivor of an early striped ensign such as many ships, men-of-war or merchant, wore in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth and the early part of the reign of James. There was, however, an early precedent of the grant of a special flag to specified merchantmen to denote a privileged position. In 1581 Elizabeth, anxious to encourage the trade then being opened up with Turkey, granted a Charter of Incorporation for a term of seven years to Sir Edward Osborn and three other merchants, who might add other Englishmen, not exceeding twelve in all, to their number. These were allowed "to set and place in the tops of their ships and other vessels the Arms of England with the red crosse over the same, as heretofore they have used the red crosse, any matter or thing to the contrary notwithstanding." On its expiry in 1588 this charter was not renewed, but in 1593 Osborn and others were incorporated in a company to be known as the Governor and Company of Merchants of the Levant, and they were "to set and place in the toppes of their ships or other vessels the Armes of England with the redde crosse in white over the same as heretofore they have used." It would appear from these words that the red cross in the original flag was bordered with white, although it is not so described in the earlier charter. The Charter of 1593 was found defective, and a new one was issued in 1601 which contained the same clause, the name of the company being changed to the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the Levant Seas." On the death of Elizabeth this charter lapsed, and it was not until the 14th December, 1605, that another charter was issued. This charter, which remained in force until 1825, omits all reference to the flag. Possibly James already had in mind the Union flag that was established early in the next year, and indeed the design of the Union flag is distinctly reminiscent of the old Levant Company's flag—the banner of Scotland taking the place of the Arms of England. The omission from this charter of any provision for a special flag cannot have been other than intentional, nevertheless the ships of the company seem to have continued to use the old flag in Levant waters, for in 1625 Sir Thomas Roe, then Ambassador to Turkey, issued a general proclamation "To all Captaynes, Maisters, pursers and officers of any English shipps and all other his Matie Subjects serving or sailing in them within ye Levant Seas," ordering "that from hence forth they, nor none of them presume to use or beare any other flagg or coulers than ye usuall flagge and Red Crosse of England, or St Andrewe of Scotland, neither in the Levant Seas nor in any Port of the Grand Signior's Dominion, upon what pretence soever." From this time the "usual flag and Red Cross of England" became very prominent in those waters and gradually replaced the French flag as protector of the lives and goods of foreign merchants trading within the Sultan's dominions. The various capitulations by which this was effected were consolidated in 1675 by a Treaty of Commerce made between Mahomet IV and Charles II[335], which, among other things, provided "that the Merchants of Spain, Portugal, Ancona, Seville, Florence, Catalonia, and all sorts of Dutch and other foreign Merchants ... might always come under the Flag and Protection of the Ambassadors or Consuls of England."
PLATE XII — Modern Ensigns, etc.