First Navy Flag ( Appeal To Heaven Flag )

[13Stars]

I found this blog spot site, saying that the First Navy Flag was the "Appeal To Heaven" Flag and not the Rattlesnake Flag, interesting reading.

First Navy Flag = Liberty Tree Flag, or"Appeal to Heaven" Flag, orWashington Cruisers Flag

[APS221]

I think Peter Ansoff might have a bit to say about it, since his work and correspondence is cited in the blog.

[csaanv]

I am not Peter but that website seems to be a bit over the top even bitter about the Dont Tread On Me flag:

"The First Navy Flag is NOT the fictional flag of the "Snake Over Stripes"
"Retreating Rattler" with its plaintive plea (Please) "Don't Tread On Me" created from legends and lies,
and sadly, on United States Navy ships currently flies".

[NAVA1974]

There is not a lot of documentation on many of our early flags, however the website seems to gloss over the fact that a flag and a jack are not necessarily the same thing. Yes, the flag (ensign) of Washington's cruisers was a pine on a white background (the flag of the Massachusetts Navy.) But the rattlesnake flag across the stripes is used by today's US Navy as their jack, not the ensign. A jack flies at the bow while the flag / ensign flies at the stern.

[csaanv]

Nick,
You make a most excellent point.

[Peter Ansoff]

The blog that 13 Stars found is written by a gent named James Manship, a former naval officer who portrays George Washington at public events. A few years ago, Manship came up with the idea that the US Navy should fly the pine tree flag as its jack instead of the rattlesnake-and-stripes "First Navy Jack" that it currently uses. He contacted me because I wrote an article about the FNJ in Raven. He also contacted Whitney Smith, Dave Martucci and others who have written about early American flags. His contention, as I understand it, is that the pine tree flag is really the first flag to have been flown by the Navy during the Revolution.

I agree with Mr. Manship (or maybe he agrees with me!) that the First Navy Jack is probably legendary, and did not even exist during the Revolutionary War. My Raven article, which discusses the subject in detail, is available online here:

http://www.nava.org/documents/raven/...4_p001-060.pdf

I disagree, however, with Manship's statement about "legends and lies." As my article shows, the myth of the First Navy Jack was created accidentally by well-meaning 19th century historians, with some assistance from the October 1917 issue of "National Geographic" magazine. The only "lies" discussed my paper relate to A. C. Buell's biography of John Paul Jones, which is a well-documented fraud.

The problem with Manship's thesis is that the pine tree / "Appeal to Heaven" flag was not used by the Revolutionary War navy either. It was used in three distinct contexts: as the identifying flag of Washington's "floating batteries" during the siege of Boston, on at least two of the commerce raiding ships that Washington commissioned in 1775-76, and as the ensign of the Massachusetts State Navy. In the first two cases, the vessels were operated by Washington's Army and had no relation to the Continental Navy. Even if one leaves aside the ensign vs. jack point that Nick made, there's really no logic behind Manship's thesis. The first ensign flown by the Continental Navy was the "Continental Colors" with the 13 stripes and the British union crosses in the canton. The first jack was probably a plain 13-striped flag.

I presented a paper on the history of the Pine Tree flag at the NAVA conference in Indianapolis in 2004, and will get it ready for publication one of these days. It's titiled "The Sign Their Banners Bore," and addresses all three of the contexts in which the flag was used.

In case anyone's wondering, Manship did not ask for or receive permission to quote my personal emails in his blog.

Peter Ansoff