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THE HISTORY
OF THE
COAST GUARD ENSIGN
The Coast
Guard ensign serves as the seagoing equivalent of a policeman's badge,
the distinctive sign of a Coast Guard vessel's law enforcement
authority. It derives from the "revenue ensign" adopted on August 1,
1799, by Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, with the approval of
President John Adams, to identify the cutters of the Revenue Marine,
the principal predecessor of the modern Coast Guard. On March 2 of
that year, Congress had enacted the Customs Administration Act,
providing in part that "the cutters and boats employed in the service
of the revenue shall be distinguished from other vessels by an ensign
and pendant, with such marks thereon as shall be prescribed by the
President."
The law, and the adoption of the distinctive flag, were
inspired by ship-owners' concerns that a ship claiming to be a revenue
cutter and ordering a merchant vessel to heave to might actually be a
pirate. Congress therefore directed the President to prescribe the
special ensign, provided a $100 fine for its unauthorized use, and
authorized the commanding officer of any cutter flying the ensign to
use deadly force against vessels that failed to heed his instructions.
(With minor modifications, this law is still in force as 14 U.S. Code
637-639.) On June 1, Secretary Wolcott submitted his proposed
design, which the President approved with the exception of "the yellow
color." There is no record of what part of Wolcott's design was
yellow, as the sketch attached to his submission is no longer extant.
The description of the final design, contained in a circular letter to
the collectors of customs, was "sixteen perpendicular stripes,
alternate red and white, the Union of the Ensign to be the Arms of the
United States, in dark blue, on a white field."
The sixteen
vertical red and white stripes on the Coast Guard ensign represent the
number of states in the Union at the time the flag was adopted. For
many years, this flag was actually flown by vessels of the Revenue
Marine (later called the Revenue Cutter Service) in lieu of the
national ensign (the Stars and Stripes). The current version of the
ensign, dating to 1966, is the product of a number of minor alterations
over the past two centuries. Most of these have affected only the
artistic treatment of the United States coat of arms in the canton,
most recently in 1951 when it was made to conform to the arms as shown
on the great seal of the United States. Otherwise, the principal
alteration was the addition of the badge on the fly in 1910 to
differentiate the flag as used by revenue cutters from that flown at
customs houses and other ports of entry ashore. The badge used was
changed on the order of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon in 1927
from that of the old Revenue Cutter Service to that of the Coast Guard,
which had become an independent bureau of the Treasury Department in
1915. This badge has been redesigned several times since, most
recently by the deletion of the motto above and below the shield in
1966
By regulation (33 CFR 23.05), the Coast Guard ensign must be displayed whenever a Coast Guard vessel is engaged in law enforcement actions. Even when they are not conducting law enforcement missions, Coast Guard vessels nevertheless fly the distinctive ensign from the head of the forward most mast. Aboard cutters in commission with a single mast, it flies immediately below the commission pennant. It may be displaced to the starboard yardarm under certain conditions, such as visits by senior civil officials or when firing salutes to foreign countries, particularly on cutters with a single mast (increasingly the norm with modern vessels). At shore installations it is displayed from the starboard yardarm of the flag mast.
And...let's never forget this flag!
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Updated February 11, 2010
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