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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: April 19, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,229 vessel histories (with 15,629 images and 13,195 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).

In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!

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

Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.

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