Part 5 (2/2)
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 s.h.i.+p 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 subst.i.tute. 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 ash.o.r.e 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 circ.u.mstance was sent from the s.h.i.+p, 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.”
I shall just add one more incident of the same kind, for which I am indebted to another naval officer. In 1879 an English corvette visited Tahiti. The island, being under French protection, flies a special flag, and as it is one which is not supplied to English men-of-war, it is usual, when it is necessary for them to salute, to borrow a protectorate flag from the authorities. On the occasion in question, accordingly, the flag was sent off by the governor's aide-de-camp (a naval officer) on the evening of the corvette's arrival at Papeite, and the flag having been hoisted on the following morning, the salute was duly fired. But the display of the flag caused a terrible commotion on sh.o.r.e. On such occasions the whole population turns out to see the salute, and the beach of the beautiful land-locked, or rather reef-inclosed, harbour was crowded with French and Tahitians watching the corvette, which was moored close under the town. The cause of the commotion was that the flag had been improperly made, so that in hoisting it the French ensign, by pure inadvertence, appeared underneath that of Tahiti. The indignation of the French was great, and they hastened to complain to the governor that their flag had been deliberately insulted by her Majesty's s.h.i.+p. The mistake, fortunately, lay entirely with the authorities on sh.o.r.e. It was only on hauling it down that the officer in command found it had been caused by the flag being improperly constructed, the technical explanation being that the distance line had been sewed in, the wrong way, with the taggle towards the bottom of the flag--a very trifling thing in itself, but which, if unexplained, might have led to serious consequences. Of course the flag was immediately sent to the governor with the explanation, and there was an end of it.
So much for naval flags.
FLAGS OF THE BRITISH ARMY.
I have already noticed incidentally some of the flags used in the armies of England in early times. Those used in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and early in the fourteenth, were, besides those of the knights and bannerets, the Royal Standard and the banners of St.
George, of St. Edmund, and of St. Edward. Subsequently various changes took place which it is unnecessary to follow.
At present in the British army every regiment of infantry has two flags.
They are both made of silk, in this differing from sea flags, which are usually made of bunting. With the exception of the Foot Guards, the first or Queen's colours of every regiment is the Union or National Flag, with the imperial crown in the centre, and the number of the regiment beneath in gold. The second or regimental colours are, with certain exceptions, of the colour of the facing of the regiment, with the Union in the upper corner. The second colours of all regiments bear the devices or badges and distinctions which have been conferred by royal authority. Fig. 28 is a representation of the regimental or second colours of the first battalion of the 24th Regiment, for which I am indebted to the courtesy of Sir Albert Woods. It will serve as an example of the regimental colours of other regiments. The pole, it will be observed, is surmounted by the royal crest, and this is common to all regiments carrying colours. The ground of the flag is gra.s.s green. The crown and wreath are ”proper,” that is of the natural colours. The scrolls are gold with black letters.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 28.--Regimental Colours of First Battalion of 24th Regiment.]
The first or royal colours of the Foot Guards are crimson, and bear certain special distinctions besides those authorized for the second colours--the whole surmounted by the imperial crown. The second, or regimental colours, of the Foot Guards is the Union, with one of the ancient badges conferred by royal authority. The first battalion of the Scots Fusilier Guards possesses the high distinction of carrying on their first colours the royal arms of Scotland.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 29.--Queen's Colours of the First Battalion of 24th Regiment.]
The colours of infantry are as a rule carried by the two junior lieutenants, and our military annals present many examples of devoted heroism by the standard-bearers in defence of their charge. Among such incidents few are more interesting than the loss and recovery of the Queen's colours of the first battalion of the 24th Regiment in the African campaign of 1878-79, to which I have already referred. It will be recollected that Lieutenants Melville and Coghill, after crossing the river Tugela with the Queen's colours, were overtaken and attacked by overwhelming numbers and shot down. They died bravely, revolvers in hand, but their pursuers failed to get possession of their precious charge--the colours having been found near them when the bodies were recovered. The Queen was much affected by this incident, and bestowed on the young heroes after death the highest distinction for valour in her power--the Victoria cross. On the arrival of the colours in England the Queen expressed a wish to see them, and they were taken to Osborne, where her Majesty tied on them a small wreath of immortelles as a mark of her deep sense of the heroism of the two young officers who gave their lives to save the flag. Fig. 29 shows the colours in the state in which they were, when presented to the Queen, with the wreath placed upon them by her Majesty.
The colours of the second battalion of the 24th had been left in camp when the troops advanced to meet the Zulus, and they were consequently captured. No trace of them could be found till some time afterwards when the pole with its crown was recovered by a party of the 17th Lancers in a Zulu kraal near Ulundi. This remnant continued to be carried by the regiment for upwards of a year, when new colours were presented to them at Gibraltar on behalf of the Queen by Lord Napier of Magdala. The old colours, or rather their pole with the crown, were first trooped. The new colours were then uncovered, and, after consecration, presented--Lord Napier stating that her Majesty knew very well that the flag had not been lost through any default of the battalion, but only in consequence of their having been placed in camp when the battalion went to the front under the general commanding.
The presentation of new colours with the accompanying consecration service is an interesting ceremony. As the form may not be generally known, I shall describe a recent one when new colours were presented by the Prince of Wales to the first battalion of the 23d Regiment (the Royal Welsh Fusiliers) on their embarkation for India. It is specially interesting in connection with the history of the old ragged colours which were then superseded. They had been presented by the late Prince Consort thirty-one years before, and in the Crimea they were the first which were planted on the heights of the Alma. Two lieutenants were successively shot while holding them, and they were finally seized by Sergeant O'Connor, who, though wounded, held them aloft and rallied the regiment. For this service he was decorated with the Victoria cross.
Shortly afterwards he received his commission, and subsequently he became colonel of the battalion. On the recent arrival of the troops at Portsmouth they were drawn up on the military recreation ground, and the Prince and Princess of Wales having taken their place at the saluting point, the regiment marched past, headed by the goat which always accompanies it. The old colours were then trooped and conveyed to the rear, and three sides of a square having been formed, with a pyramid of the drums in the centre, the new colours were uncased. The royal party then advanced, and the senior chaplain of the regiment read the Consecration service. The Queen's colours and the regimental colours were then handed to the prince, and he presented them to the two lieutenants who received them kneeling. The prince having spoken a few appropriate words, and the colonel having replied, the colours were saluted by the whole regiment. Another march past, and the presentation of the officers to the prince, concluded the ceremony.
In the cavalry the standards of regiments of Dragoon Guards are of crimson silk damask, embroidered and fringed with gold, and their guidons, anciently called ”guydhomme”--a swallow-tailed flag--are of crimson silk. Each is inscribed with the peculiar devices, distinctions, and mottoes of the regiment. The standards and guidons of cavalry are carried by troop sergeant-majors. The Hussars and Lancers have no standards. They were discontinued, for what reason I do not know, by William IV., and their badges and devices are now borne on their appointments. Neither the Royal Engineers nor the Rifles have colours.
Neither have the Royal Artillery; nor is it necessary that they should have any on which to record special services, for the Artillery is represented in every action. Their appropriate motto, _Ubique_, is borne on their appointments. None of the Volunteer regiments carries colours.
The queen's and regimental colours always parade with the regiment. On march they are cased, but they are always uncased when carried into action.
For military authorities ”when embarked in boats or other vessels,”
there is, as we have seen, a special flag. It is the Union with the royal initials in the centre on a blue circle, surrounded by a green garland, and surmounted by the imperial crown.
USE OF FLAGS BY PRIVATE PERSONS.
In regard to the use of the national flag by private persons, there is a positive rule as to marine flags, but none, so far as I am aware, as to its use on sh.o.r.e. I have occasionally seen it flown on sh.o.r.e with a white border, under an impression, apparently, that this difference was necessary, but it is unmeaning, and there is no authority for it. In numberless instances we see one or other of the marine Ensigns hoisted on sh.o.r.e over gentlemen's houses, or used in street decoration on the occasion of public rejoicings; but nothing could be more absurd, as the ensign is exclusively a s.h.i.+p flag.
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