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A Signal Flag Locker

by John MacFarlane 2016

A typical signal flag locker (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection. )

To speed up flag hoisting, flags were stowed in the locker with the Inglefield clips outward, so that the signalman could bend on three or four flags and then the halyard pulled the whole lot out as the group was hoisted. In the first half of the 20th Century, even with the advent of radio, manoeuvring with the aid of flags still held sway. It could only be used by day of course, but then it was not policy to engage in full scale battles or other evolutions at night. Flags were an efficient system for ships communicatingt in close company (especially maintaining radio silence), and popular because admirals and captains could see what was happening and they felt firmly in control of the situation.

Each navy had its own flag codes, and surprisingly it was not until after the Second World War that all NATO navies adopted a common flag code system.

Some flags are common to civilian and military usage but the military powered have developed extra specialized flags to meet their own requirments.

To quote from this article please cite:

MacFarlane, John M. (2016) A Signal Flag Locker. Nauticapedia.ca 2016. http://nauticapedia.ca/Articles/Flag_Locker.php

Site News: December 21, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,824 vessel histories (with 16,274 images and 13,929 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).

Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 45,000 processed so far this year (2024).

The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3996 images).

Thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of vessel histories in the database. Ray has been documenting the ships of Vancouver Harbour for more than 60 years.

Thanks to contributor Mike Rydqvist McCammon for the hundreds of photos he has contributed to illustrate British Columbia’s floating heritage.

My very special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

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