First Navy Jack

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First U.S. Navy Jack (traditional)

The First Navy Jack is the current U.S. jack authorized by the United States Navy. The design is traditionally regarded as that of first U.S. naval jack flown in the earliest years of the republic, though little if any historical documentation supports this lore.

1 History
2 Modern usage
3 Reference
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Historically probable first naval jack.

In the fall of 1775, as the first ships of the Continental Navy readied in the Delaware River, Commodore Esek Hopkins issued, in a set of fleet signals, an instruction directing his vessels to fly a "striped" jack and ensign. The exact design of these flags is unknown. The ensign was likely to have been the Grand Union Flag, and the jack a simplified version of the ensign: a field of 13 horizontal red and white stripes. However, the jack has traditionally been depicted as consisting of thirteen red and white stripes charged with an uncoiled rattlesnake and the motto "Dont Tread on Me" (sic); this tradition dates at least back to 1880, when this design appeared in a color plate in Admiral George Henry Preble's influential History of the Flag of the United States. Recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that this inferred design never actually existed but "was a 19th-century mistake based on an erroneous 1776 engraving".^[1]

The rattlesnake had long been a symbol of resistance to the British in Colonial America. The phrase "Don't tread on me" was coined during the American Revolutionary War, a variant perhaps of the snake severed in segments labelled with the names of the colonies and the legend "Join or Die" which had appeared first in Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754, as a political cartoon reflecting on the Albany Congress.

The rattlesnake (specifically, the Timber Rattlesnake) is especially significant and symbolic to the American Revolution. The rattle has thirteen layers, signifying the original Thirteen Colonies. And, the snake does not strike until provoked, a method embodied in the phrase "Don't tread on me."

[edit] Modern usage

Raising of the “Navy Jack” for the first time at morning colors, on September 11, 2002, aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Thomas S. Gates in honor of those killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The First Navy Jack was first used in recent history during the Bicentennial year, 1976, when all commissioned naval vessels were directed to fly it for the entire year, in lieu of the standard fifty-star jack.

In 1980, Edward Hidalgo, the Secretary of the Navy, directed that the ship with the longest active status shall display the First Navy Jack until decommissioned or transferred to inactive service. Then the flag will be passed to the next ship in line. This honor was conferred on the following U.S. Navy vessels:

1981 - 1982: Destroyer tender USS Dixie (AD 14), commissioned 1940
1982 - 1993: Destroyer tender USS Prairie (AD 15), commissioned 1940
1993 - 1993: Submarine tender USS Orion (AS 18), commissioned 1943
1993 - 1995: Repair Ship USS Jason (AR 8), commissioned 1944
1995 - 1995: Ammunition ship USS Mauna Kea (AE 22), commissioned 1957
1995 - 1998: Aircraft carrier USS Independence (CV 62), commissioned 1959
On September 30, 1998, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63), commissioned in 1961, became the oldest active-status ship upon the decommissioning of Independence.
Upon Kitty Hawk's expected 2009 decommissioning, USS Enterprise (CVN-65), commissioned 1961, will hold that honor.

The Secretary of the Navy issued Instruction 10520.6, dated 31 May 2002, directing all Navy ships to fly this flag as a "temporary substitution" for the Union Jack "during the Global War on Terrorism". Most vessels made the switch on September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks.