The colonists had adopted a flag, but all sorts of colors continued to be borne on both sea and land. On the sea the favorite seems to have been a white flag displaying a green pine tree. One year after the battle of Lexington, Massachusetts formally decreed that this flag should be used on her vessels, and that their officers should wear a green and white uniform. Even two years later than this, the Pine-Tree Flag was borne by floating batteries on the Delaware River. Sometimes the British ran up an American flag to deceive the colonial vessels, and sometimes the colonists ran up a flag made of horizontal red and white stripes to persuade the British that it was one of their own signal flags. Sometimes rattlesnake flags were used. Congress ordered the building of war vessels as promptly as possible, five cruisers first of all. The Alfred, on which John Paul Jones was lieutenant, became the flagship of Commander-in-Chief Esek Hopkins. This vessel was of English build and had been employed in commerce for nine or ten years, making two voyages to the Indian Ocean during that time. She had space for two hundred and twenty men, and had sixteen guns, carried for the benefit of pirates. She had been put in full repair and had now become a frigate of twenty-eight guns. Such was the first vessel of the Continental Navy. An old account of the embarkation of Commodore Hopkins at Philadelphia says:-- The Alfred was anchored at the foot of Walnut Street. On a brilliant morning early in February, 1776, gay streamers were seen floating from every masthead and spar on the river. At nine o'clock a full-manned barge threaded its way among the floating ice to the Alfred, bearing the commodore, who had chosen that vessel for his flagship. He was greeted with thunders of artillery and the shouts of the multitude. When he stepped on board the deck of the Alfred, Captain Saltonstall gave a signal, and Lieutenant Jones hoisted a new flag prepared for the occasion. It is believed to have displayed a union with thirteen stripes crossed by a rattlesnake in some position, with the ominous motto, "Don't tread on me." When the flag reached the mast-head, the crowds cheered and the guns fired a salute,--as well they might, for this was the first ensign ever flung to the breeze on an American man-of-war. Paul Jones appreciated the honor of raising it, but he was no admirer of the rattlesnake flag. In his journal he wrote:-- I was always at loss to know by what queer fancy or by whose notion that device was first adopted. For my own part, I never could see how or why a venomous serpent could be the combatant emblem of a brave and honest folk fighting to be free. Of course I had no choice but to break the pennant as it was given to me. But I always abhorred the device.