The Flags of the World: Their History, Blazonry, and AssociationsHulme, F. Edward (Frederick Edward)
History
The Flags of the World: Their History, Blazonry, and Associations
Hulme, F. Edward (Frederick Edward)
Flags
The badges of the various Colonies of the Empire, as shown in the official
flag-book of the Admiralty, are very diverse in appearance; some pleasing
and others less charming, perhaps, than fantastic. It is needless to
particularise them all. Some, like those of Mauritius, Jamaica, and of Cape
Colony (Fig. 127) are heraldic in character, while others--as Barbadoes,
where Britannia rides the waves in a chariot drawn by sea-horses, or South
Australia, where Britannia lands on a rocky shore on which a black man is
seated--are symbolical. Queensland has the simple and pleasing device we
see in Fig. 128, the Maltese Cross, having a crown at its centre.
Newfoundland has a crown on a white disc and the {84} Latinised name _Terra
Nova_ beneath, and Fiji (Fig. 137) adopts a like simple device, the crown
and the word Fiji, while New Guinea does not get even so far as this, but
has the crown, and beneath it the letters N. G. The gnu appears as the
device of Natal; the black swan (Fig. 141) as the emblem of West Australia.
An elephant and palm-tree on a yellow ground stand for West Africa, and an
elephant and temple for Ceylon. British North Borneo (Fig. 132), on a
yellow disc has a red lion, and Tasmania (Fig. 133), on a white ground has
the same, though it will be noted that the action of the two royal beasts
is not quite the same. The Straits Settlements have the curious device seen
in Fig. 131. New Zealand (Fig. 136) has a cross of stars on a blue field.
Victoria we have already seen in Figs. 134 and 135, while New South Wales
has upon the white field the Cross of St. George, having in the centre one
of the lions of England, and on each arm a star--an arrangement shown in
Fig. 138. British East Africa has the crown, and beneath it the golden sun
shooting forth its rays, one of the simplest, most appropriate, and most
pleasing of all the Colonial devices; when placed in the centre of the
Governor's flag it is upon a white disc, and the sun has eight principal
rays. When for use on the red or blue ensigns, the sun has twelve principal
rays, and both golden sun and crown are placed directly upon the field of
the flag. St. Helena, Trinidad, Bermuda, British Guiana, Leeward Isles,
Labuan, Bahamas, and Hong Kong all have devices in which ships are a
leading feature--in the Bermuda device associated with the great floating
dock, in the Hong Kong with junks, and in the other cases variously
differentiated from each other, so that all are quite distinct in
character. In the device of the Leeward Isles, designed by Sir Benjamin
Pine, a large pine-apple is growing in the foreground, and three smaller
ones away to the right. It is jocularly assumed that the centre one was Sir
Benjamin himself, and the three subordinate ones his family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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