Last modified: 2001-06-01 by ivan sache
Keywords: unidentified flag |
Links: FOTW homepage |
search |
disclaimer and copyright |
write us |
mirrors
See also:
![[Unidentified Greek ensign, 1820]](../misc/gr~ufe20.gif)
scanned by John Harland
The French etcher Jean-Jérôme Baubean published two
books of maritime etchings c. 1810-1820.
Among 200 images, two show Greek merchant vessels. They fly an ensign
with a cross reaching the ensign edges.Each quarter includes a
smaller cross. Therefore, the ensign looks like the
Jerusalem ensign, the
Malta Grand Master's ensign, or a
Vatican's banner. Anyway, the represented
ensign does not show the crosses with a T ending the arms.
The caption of the plate is: 'Corvette marchande grecque, venant
de mouillir', which translates as: "Greek merchant corvette lying
at anchor".
At that time, Greek was under Ottoman
rule, and the crosses with their Christian symbolic look weird.
John Harland, 9 August 2000
An analogous flag is labelled 'flag of Jerusalem' in J.Siebmacher`s Flaggenbuch (Nurnberg, 1878).
Victor Lomantsov, 19 August 2000
If the flag was white and the crosses red, I believe that this flag came from the Franciscan Order. It looks like the flag of the Custody of the Franciscan Order in Levant and Holy Land.
Jaume Ollé, 26 August 2000
We also have to remember that the Greeks' fight for independence became very popular among the Romantic cenacles in Western Europe (especially after Lord Byron's death in Missolonghi in 1824 and the monumental painting of Delacroix entitled Scènes of the slaughters in Scio, showed to the Salon in Paris in 1824). It is possible that an enthusiastic artist did some false interpretation of a reported ensign.
Ivan Sache, 26 August 2000
|