engleski

The Naval Flags on the Eastern Adriatic

The flags are used on warships since the antiquity, but their usage and design are not preserved. While there are numerous flags used in the navies on ships, there are as a rule three particular flags that are used as the identification of the ship’ s nationality – ensign hoisted at stern, jack hoisted at bow and the command pennant hoisted at the masthead. This paper presents these flags as used by various navies that had their seat in the Eastern Adriatic, i.e. the modern Croatian coast. Dominated by many power through the old age, since Venice overpowered the Byzantine rule of Dalmatia there were but occasional cities enjoying autonomy in certain times. In spite of its huge merchant marine Dubrovnik maintained only a small navy that used white flags with the Republic’ s emblems. However, the first big power that took the Adriatic from the lengthily domination of Venice was the Habsburg Monarchy introducing the naval flags already in the 15th century. The documented flags reach only to 17th century, yellow with black imperial eagles. With the reforms of Joseph II the Austrian red-white-red triband was introduced to be used with minor alterations until the end of the Dual Monarchy. In the period after the Great War the captured naval ships used the Allied ensigns as well as the white ensigns of surrender and the majority of the Austro-Hungarian fleet that surrendered in Pula hoisted briefly the Croatian tricolour. The new South-Slavic state introduced a new tricolour. During the World War II the puppet Croatian state used the banner of chequy arms for the ensign of the several ships. At the same time the antifascist partisans introduced the red five-pointed star in the national tricolours. This was often used upside-down in the navy manned mostly by Croats. Several designs were exchanged during the war. The Socialist Yugoslavia introduced initially naval flags based on the Soviet model, but soon departed from it, though that had but little influence to the three naval flags. Even before the formal independence Croatia dropped the star from its flags and put the chequy shield in its tricolour. Until the adoption of the current design shortly the simple ad hoc versions were in use, and afterward the ensign was of equal design to the national ensign. The new design adding anchors was introduced in 1999.

Naval Flag; Ensign; Jack; Masthead Pennant; Croatia; Dubrovnik; Austria; Austria-Hungary; SCS/Yugoslavia; Independent State of Croatia; Tito’ s Partisans; Socialist Yugoslavia

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