JANUARY 2021: You can tell a lot about people by the flags they fly. Business reporters Anne Quito and Amanda Sherdruk of qz.com surveyed the flags displayed by pro-Trump supporters at last week’s raid on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The flags exhibit, not so much a movement, as a sea of hate, fear, and confusion.
There were flags representing the conspiracy theory group Q-Anon. There were “Stop the Steal” flags, “Trump as Rambo” flags, “Thin Blue LIne” police support flags, the Marine Corp flag, and the South Carolina “Union Jack.” Pro-Trump protestors also waved flags representing the Republic of Kekistand, an ancient Egyptian deity of Darkness. The “Three Percenter” emblem of military extremists mixed with Old Glory, upside-down American flags, the St. Andrew’s Cross, the “Come and Take it” flags displaying a canon, various state flags, Confederate flags, and even the pro-Christian Ichthys symbol, often called the “Jesus Fish” flag.
Two of them, the white Culpeper Flag and the yellow Gadsden Flag, include a coiled rattlesnake with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me.” The rattlesnake used to represent colonial American opposition to a tyrannical king. Lately the symbol has been appropriated by militia groups and the Tea Party who are opposed to what they consider the oppression of their own democratic government. The rattlesnake idea dates back to before the Revolution when Benjamin Franklin created the “Join or Die” image of a snake cut into segments representing the 13 original colonies.
Amid all the recent chaos, I was reminded of a long distance phone conversation I had exactly 20 years ago with the late maritime historian and naval artist William Gilkerson who lived in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. Gilkerson was the world expert in the many flags and ensigns attributed to the ships of John Paul Jones. We agreed that we will never know what flag Jones flew as he guided the warship Ranger out of the Piscataqua River and into history.
At one point, the conversation turned to the flag Lieutenant Jones hoisted above Alfred at Philadelphia in 1775, two years before he arrived in Portsmouth. Many illustrations show Jones with a rattlesnake flag bearing the “Don’t Tread on Me” slogan. Today, based on what I’ve read, flag experts – they’re called “vexillologists” – believe Jones hoisted the “Grand Union” flag, rather than the “Navy Jack” flag with the rattlesnake.
“We have no idea what the flag was like that he raised on Alfred when he was First Lieutenant,” Gilkerson told me. “There’s sort of a consensus as to what flags he flew on his command, but that was not his command.”
In his collectible book, “Ships of John Paul Jones” (1987), Gilkerson cheated a bit. It’s hard to tell what flag is flying in his illustrations of Alfred, but it is definitely not the Navy Jack. In his illustrations of Providence, captained by Jones, Gilkerson clearly drew the Grand Union flag. It was a combination of the British flag plus 13-red and white stripes. And that makes sense. Revolutionary Americans still saw themselves as descended from Mother England, rather than violent snake-like rebels. The first goal of the Revolution was to gain representation and respect as English citizens. Independence was a byproduct.
“Modern historians are always looking for the quintessential item for a certain age and there really isn’t one.” Gilkerson told me. There was no single American flag at first. Our flag evolved. And while flags communicate meaning, the same flag can mean different things to different people. Back during the War for Independence, people were loyal to a wide range of causes. Some wanted freedom and equality. Some wanted wealth, power and slavery – all under the same banner.
One eyewitness from 1775 appears to prove that Jones definitely did not raise a rattlesnake flag on Alfred. The witness wrote in a letter that “the largest ship will carry at her mizzen peak a Jack with the Union flag, and striped red and white in the field.”
Which is why I was amused by today’s photograph of a man raising the Navy Jack flag outside his home in Texas back around 1982. The caption says the Navy Jack is traditionally flown from the bow of a ship on patriotic holidays. True enough. But the newspaper also reported that the flag in the photo is a reproduction of the one carried by John Paul Jones on the Bonhomme Richard in 1775. Sorry, wrong ship, wrong flag, and wrong date.
But flags can be confusing, even when we know which flag we’re talking about. I asked William Gilkerson if, after years of studying and illustrating all these ships, how he felt about Captain Jones.
“I had the feeling that I did get to know him,“ Gilkerson told me. “He was your basic warrior. I don’t think he was particularly patriotic to the USA at all. In fact, he really liked France. He liked being known as a skillful commander. But he needed a flag to wave and a reason to go fight somebody.”
All too true today, Mr. Gilkerson. All too true.
Copyright 2021 by J. Dennis Robinson
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