The first naval signal book to be printed in the English language was issued within the years 1714 and 1715 by Jonathan Greenwood. According to information received from Stationers’ Hall, London, Jonathan Greenwood was born about 1656, was apprenticed on June 22, 1670, and took up the freedom of the Stationers’ Company on March 24, 1679, though he did not become a liveryman. He was the son of one James Greenwood, clerk, of Melton, Westmorland. Except for the signal book, there is no work of his in the British Museum and nothing further is known of his business as a publisher.
The main sources of early signaling information in England are the collections of signal instructions and signal books in the Royal United Service Institution and the Admiralty Library. In the present connection two of the oldest documents in the R.U.S.I. library catalogue are perhaps the most interesting. The one, a folio, provides the earliest example of printed Instructions known in English history. It is ascribed to the year 1672 as near as may be, and bears the following title:
JAMES, Duke of York and Albany, Earl of Ulster, Lord High Admiral of England, Scotland & Ireland, Constable of Dover-Castle, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Governor of Portsmouth, &c.
Instructions for The better Ordering His Majesties Fleet in Sayling.
Bound in the same volume are: “Instructions to be observed By all Masters, Pilots, Ketches, Hoys & Smacks, attending the Fleet” and “Instructions for The better Ordering His Majesties Fleet in Fighting.”
Some examples of the seafaring terms in this book are peculiar enough to mention, such as rere, missen-shrowds, on boord, fagots, lye a trey, and lye a hull.
The second book to be noticed is also a printed volume of folio size, erroneously attributed to the year 1710. Opposite every “Instruction” some unknown owner and talented artist has painted in water color a spirited and appropriate sketch of every incident referred to in the letter- press. In most cases there is a sketch of men-of-war of the period performing the purport of the signal; sometimes fire ships are bearing down on the enemy, or boats are in action towing fire ships away from the point of danger. In one instance where the “Instruction” requires certain noises, the page is adorned with sketches of muskets being fired, soldiers in miter hats beating their drums, and the bell in the ships’s belfry rocking from side to side.
At first sight it looks as if Greenwood had adopted a method of illustration borrowed from the ideas of contemporary signalers, but a closer examination of this printed folio shows that the artist has portrayed, where such a signal occurs, the royal standard of George I. I venture to say, therefore, that the ascribed date is erroneous since these marginal paintings must have been done later than 1714, and that the artist’s work was an imitation of Greenwood’s method, and not vice versa.
Whether the broadcasting of Admiralty Instructions at this date, for all and sundry to buy, was officially recognized there is no means of knowing, but from the number of specimens of Greenwood’s book still in existence, after the passage of 220 years, its circulation must have been comparatively wide.
The objections to the printed folio books were, (1) that they were too large for handy reference on deck, and (2) that they were in no sense suitable for decoding; that is, unless the observer knew almost by heart the meaning of the flags, with their accompanying guns, put abroad by the admiral, he would have to search throughout the pages of the book to find the reference. It is true that the first issues of Instructions had indices relating to the number of guns fired and flags displayed, but this was not carried on in the subsequent editions.
However, the introduction to Greenwood’s booklet, showing as it does the reasons for its inception, may best be allowed to speak for itself:
To the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty—
Edward Earl of Orford
Sr George Byng
George Doddington Esq
Sr John Jennings
Sr Charles Turner
George Bayley Esq
May it please your Lordships
My publishing this Performance is not with any design of derogating from the Value and Usefullness of ye Printed Instructions; this being an exact Coppy of them But what I have Endeavour’d at, is the putting them in such a Method, as may make them more Easily and Readily found out and likewise to supply the Inferiour Officers, who cannot have recourse to the Printed Ones, and as I have disposed matters in such a manner, that any Instruction may be found out in half a minute: so I have made it a Pocket Volume that it may be at hand upon all Occasions, As to the dangerous Consequences of mistaking any Signall Especially by night, I need not mention them to Jour Lordships. May your Lordships long live to adorn ye high Station, that ye Prudence and Justice of the Greatest Prince in Europe has assigned to your Merit and Worth, is the hearty wish of my Lords.
Your Lordships most humble and obedient servant
Jonathan Greenwood.
For convenience, it will be better to quote here also some further explanations, which under the heading of “References,” occur at the end of the book.
For the more immediate finding any Signall that shall be made Note That in the first Pages are all the signals about the Mainmast takeing from ye Masthead Downwards In the Next Eages are those about ye Foremast and after them ye Signals about the mizenmast and Ensign staff In the Latter part are ye signals In a Fog and by Night The number of Guns fired at the making any Signal is inserted at the top of Each Page.
From the above, the advantage of the book will be seen to lie in the fact that each signal is represented by an appropriate and distinct sketch of its appearance in color. There are 106 separate pictures of the man-of-war with different aspects of the sails set and the flags flying. These range from the vessel at anchor, with topsails loosed, equivalent to the signal to weigh; to the same ship with sails set, main topmast shot away and a weft at the ensign-staff to denote “In distress in time of Battle.”
Further sections are devoted to “Signalls in a Fogg,” and “Signalls by Night,” consisting in the one case of pictures of a gun on a carriage emitting a puff of smoke, and marked with a Roman numeral to designate the number of such reports, e.g., “X, To make saile after Lying by”; and in the other case, of darkened ships displaying various yellow lanterns on the spars and in the rigging, e.g., one lantern at each of the three mastheads, “To moor.”
Old signal books of all kinds are today much sought after, and several important collections are now in existence, the best known being, perhaps, that of Lieutenant Commander W. D. Miller, U. S. Naval Reserve, of Kingston, R.I. Some of the more recent codes devoted to the Merchant Service are known to be represented by only two or three specimens still extant, the reason of their scarcity being that contemporary owners set no store by them. That the earlier books have, in comparison, been somewhat better preserved is due to the fact that they are so much greater works of art. Many of the manuscript signal notebooks executed in the eighteenth century are remarkable for the most beautiful and painstaking water- color work. The same applies to Greenwood’s book, for although the plates are engraved, they are all colored by hand. This coloring varies very much with the copy; in some the paint is washy, in others it is bright and strong. In some the hulls of the ships are uncolored, in others the bow and stern decoration is painted yellow, and in one de luxe specimen belonging to Commander Schwerdt, R.N., this has been carried out in gold. A complete copy in the writer’s possession has written on the flyleaf in a childish, contemporary hand: “Eleanor Lax. Father gave it to me.” This treatment is typical of the fate of such books, many of the old manuscripts being scribbled over and their flags clipped out, showing the youthful caprice of their owners, to whom they had been handed by indulgent parents as playthings; playthings which today will command anything up to $100 and more.
The writer is indebted to Messrs. Maggs Brothers, booksellers of Conduit Street, London, for particulars of copies of Greenwood which have recently come to light. Prior to 1930 the work was so rare as to be almost unknown in the market, but since then several specimens have turned up and have been disposed of to various collectors both in the United States and in England. There have been several references to it earlier, however, as it is depicted in Select Naval Documents, by Hodges and Hughes (1922), besides being mentioned by Sir Julian Corbett in Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816; by Vice Admiral R. Siegel in Die Flagge in 1912; and in British Flags by W. G. Perrin, in 1922.
In 1919, moreover, it was the subject of a short inquiry on the part of a historically minded member of the Royal United Service Institution, the late Commander C. F. Jepson, Royal Navy, a Staff College graduate, whose untimely death occurred in January, 1931. The remarks written by Jepson and inserted in the copy of Greenwood preserved in the museum of the R.U.S.I. are as follows:
In August 1918 a copy of Greenwood’s Signal Book was noticed in Ripon Museum.1 As the museum authorities were unaware of the nature or value of the book, permission was obtained to examine it, and it was thought that a comparison of it with the copies at the British Museum, Admiralty Library, and R.U.S.I. might prove interesting.
The only complete copy appears to be that in the British Museum once the property of Admiral the Earl of Northesk. 64 plates, i.e. 16 pages, are missing from the Ripon copy, but it contains two plates which the Admiralty copy lacks. The R.U.S.I. at one time may have possessed two copies but one of them has apparently been mislaid. The other has a page missing which is intact in the Ripon copy.
All the plates in the Northesk copy show ships of the Blue Division, flying blue ensigns and squadronal pendants, while the Admiralty and Ripon copies are for the Red Division; nevertheless, in the latter copies a ship is sometimes made to wear a red pendant with a blue ensign. The common pendant is also frequently worn.
Where horizontally and diagonally striped flags are shown the number of stripes varies considerably in the several books.
Some unaccountable differences are seen in the following table:
Copy |
To windward |
To the N.E. |
To the N.W. |
Northesk |
A red burgee over a red square flag |
A red burgee over a red square flag with a white St. George |
A blue burgee over a square flag, half blue over white |
Admiralty and Ripon |
The burgee is yellow instead of red |
The burgee is yellow instead of red |
The burgee is yellow instead of blue |
The differences which have been mentioned, all occurring in the sole edition of a work intended for use in the ordering of a fleet are only another instance of the scanty consideration bestowed upon signalling in the slackest period of English Naval History.
C. F. Jepson. 29.1.19.
Jepson goes strangely astray in paragraph 3 of the above record, for in the Northesk book the majority of the ensigns are red, which is consistent with the fact that the plates normally depict the signals made by the commander in chief, namely the admiral of the Red Squadron. Where a private ship is shown making a signal, i.e., in signals 12, 13, and 105, it is true that a blue ensign is given in the Northesk copy, which, though a departure from the general practice in other copies, is quite justifiable.
If it is permissible to differ from the opinion of an officer but recently deceased, the following rejoinder seems only reasonable. From an examination I have made of various copies of Greenwood, the red burgee seen in the Northesk specimen seems actually to be the exception, yellow burgees being much more prevalent. This detail is, as a matter of fact, entirely unimportant since the “burgee” or long swallow-tailed flag portrayed by Greenwood is nothing more nor less than the “pendant” of the period, as can be seen, for instance, in signal 50 in the book, For Longboats man d & Arm'd, if loo Chace two Guns, A Pendant on the Flagstaff at the Mizen- top-mast-head.
The “unaccountable differences” are only with regard to the color of these burgees or pendants which, in the cases quoted, refer to the “particular ship,” whose distinguishing signal, consisting of a pendant, would naturally vary according to ship, either in color or in the position where it was hoisted. This burgee forms no part of the main purport of the signal to chase in each circumstance, as can be learned on reading the wording of the appropriate Instruction. Although, too, the strictures upon the slackest period of English naval history may be deserved, it is only fair to remark that Greenwood’s was not the sole edition, because the standard and official work was the folio Instructions, which had many editions from 1673 to 1780, and which specifically laid down the signals for each occasion. It must not be lost sight of that Greenwood’s was only a private, subsidiary venture.
An objection to Greenwood’s arrangement is that the signals are not collected in any readily accessible order, beyond being grouped, as he says, under the chief divisions of those displayed about the main-, fore-, and mizzenmast, respectively. Hence it is found that signals referring to the Sailing Instructions, Fireships, Calling Officers, and the most important Fighting Instructions, are mingled together in a very haphazard manner. To give but one instance, four consecutive signals, all, it is true, hoisted about the mizzen, have the following significations:
A Flag striped Yellow and White from Comer to Comer on the Cross Jack-yard.
For Fireships in ye Admirall of the Blews Division.
A Pendant on the Mizen-peek.
For Captains in his own Division if Lieuts a weft with the Ensign.
A Flag strip’d Yellow and White, at the Mizen-peek.
For all Tenders to come under the Admirals Stem.
An Union Flag at the Mizen-peek.
For the Fleet to Draw into a Line of battle a head of one Another.
Greenwood’s lead, however, was presently followed and improved upon, for in 1746 (1748), John Millan published another pocket book in which the flags were set out at the top of the pages, with a list underneath of the positions where hoisted, corresponding with the meanings in each case. Manuscript books, too, soon conformed to the pictorial method, and it then became the custom to paint each flag in a thumb index which disclosed on its own page all the relevant significations.
Certain foreign signal books, if not imitations of Greenwood, followed his technique very closely. One of these is seen on page 1820.2 It is the reproduction of a page from the night signals in a Spanish manuscript book of about 1740, now in the possession of Lieutenant Commander Miller. It is said to have been drawn by and inscribed in his own hand by Don Juan José Navarro, Marques de la Victoria, who became Captain General of the Spanish fleet, and in 1744 was engaged with Admiral Mathews’s squadron off Toulon. Commander Miller informs me, in addition, that a Dutch book exists, printed in Amsterdam in 1746 under the authorship of N. Govertsz, a clerk in the State Navy. Pictures of ships with colored flags and the number of guns to be fired, show the probable influence of Greenwood on this work, a deduction which is strengthened by the occurrence in its pages of a comparison between the signals in the contemporary Dutch and English signal books.
A well-known bookseller in Chicago has recently revealed that the issue of Greenwood hitherto regarded as the original is, in fact, not so. He has a specimen of a book which, since its dedication lacks the names of any of the Lords of the Admiralty, must predate all other specimens known in museums and private collections. This discovery goes far to upset preconceived notions as to the actual date of issue of the work. On account of the dedication, naming six out of the seven members of the Board of Admiralty constituted on October 14, 1714, the book has been attributed variously to the years 1714 and 1715, and since no person on earth could forecast that Queen Anne would die on August 1, 1714, and a new Board of Admiralty be appointed six weeks later, the full engraving of the title page can only have been done during the closing months of 1714, at the earliest.
An anomaly which at first sight seems obstructive, is that wherever the Royal Standard appears in the pictures in the book, that of Queen Anne is the one shown. There is no trouble in identifying the standard which appears in signals 48, 49, 83, and 98. In Queen Anne’s standard the first and fourth quarters were alike, each showing vertically (per pale) the leopards and the Scottish lion. In George I’s standard the fourth quarter is quite distinctive, and consists of various arms, which need not be gone into now, but which included the very evident white horse of Westphalia. I have examined, or asked the owners to examine, most of the known specimens of Greenwood, and in every case the Royal Standard is Anne’s. I do not know if the device of the standard is actually engraved, but this is of no importance since the painted color covers it. It, therefore, looks as if all the pictures in the books were colored during the first part of 1714, and the title engraved or re- engraved considerably later. I am told that it would take at least twelve months to engrave the whole of a volume such as Greenwood’s, so we may confidently affirm that it was begun sometime during 1713.
The officer must possess a thorough appreciation of technical science, but this must not mislead, him into neglecting the study of men. Knowledge of men is a fundamental condition of successful leadership. Hence the study of History—above all of Military History—is of the highest value. It is an inexhaustible source of consolation in the midst of the monotony which is an inevitable circumstance of service in time of peace.—Von Freytag Loringhoven, Deductions from the Great War.
1. Now, however, other complete copies are known to exist in the United States in the possession of Lieutenant Commander W. D. Miller and Mr. Beverly Robinson, and in England in the National Maritime Museum and in the possession of Professor Callender, Commander C. M. R. Schwerdt, and the present writer, A defective copy is in the Portsmouth Museum. Most, if not all, of these have original bindings; the Northesk copy has not.
2. Kindly supplied by Messrs. Maggs Brothers, already referred to.