Talk:Ensign (flag)

Removed "US Yacht Ensign"

File:Us ensign.png

United States Yacht Ensign was designed in 1848 at the request of the Secretary of the Navy to distinguish private yachts from commercial vessels and warships. It is flown in place of the national ensign (flag).

I removed this example image from the article, and replaced it with the red ensign (because that's a valid example of a special yacht/merchant ensign). The reason is that the so-called "US Yacht Ensign" does not exist. There used to be such an ensign, and it looked like this, but it never had any real legal standing as a national ensign, and it was abolished entirely in 1980.[1]

Many US vessels do in fact wear this flag as an ensign. In US waters, this is OK, because small pleasure boats don't need an ensign in US waters; so you could wear the Mickey Mouse flag if you wanted to. However, any documented vessel, or any vessel in international waters, must wear a legal ensign, which for US vessels is the Stars and Stripes.[2] (Don't get me started about the number of US yachts insulting the flag by flying it on the flag hoist as a courtesy or signal flag...)[3] — Johan the Ghost _seance 20:41, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merger

I just don't think that naval ensign is a big enough subject in its own right to merit an article; it could easily be a sub-section of ensign. So, unless anyone has any ideas for a major expansion of naval ensign, I suggest merger. Note that we don't have articles on "civil ensign" and "merchant ensign". — Johan the Ghost _seance 17:09, 16 March 2006 (UTC)