At the masthead:  a blue pendant with the Union in canton and the Customs badge of office (a castellated structure with portcullis over the entrance, and two barred windows and two port-holes, one barred and one open, the latter doubtless to signify that through which the goods might enter) in the fly.

At the gaff:  a blue ensign similarly marked.

The English Excise, the Scottish Customs, Scottish Excise, and the Irish Revenue signals of chase were blue pendants and ensigns similarly flown, but as to the badges of office one cannot be certain.  The matter of English Customs flags has been obscured by the quotation in Marryat’s The King’s Own, where a smuggler is made to remark on seeing a Revenue vessel’s flag, “Revenue stripes, by the Lord.”  It has been suggested that the bars of the castle port and portcullis in the seal were called “stripes” by the sailors of that day, inasmuch as they called the East India Company’s flag of genuine stripes the “gridiron.”  But to me it seems much more likely that the following is the explanation for calling a Revenue cutter’s flag “stripes.”  The signal flags Nos. 7 and 8, which were used by the Royal Navy in 1746 to order a chase both consisted of stripes.[15] No. 7 consisted of eleven horizontal stripes, viz. six red and five white.  Flag No. 8 had nine horizontal stripes, viz. red, white, blue repeated three times, the red being uppermost.  I submit that in sailor’s slang these signals would be commonly referred to as “stripes.”  Consequently whatever flags subsequently would be used to signal a chase would be known also as “stripes.”  Therefore whatever signal might be flown in the Revenue service when chasing would be known as “stripes” also.

But by an Order in Council of the 1st of February 1817, the pendant and ensign were to be thus:—­

The pendant to have a red field having a regal crown thereon at the upper part next the mast.  The ensign to be a red Jack with a Union Jack in a canton at the upper corner next the staff, and with a regal crown in the centre of the red Jack.  This was to be worn by all vessels employed in the prevention of smuggling under the Admiralty, Treasury, Customs or Excise.

Now during an interesting trial at the Admiralty Sessions held at the Old Bailey in April of 1825, concerning the chasing of a smuggler by a Revenue cruiser, Lieutenant Henry Nazer, R.N., who was commanding the cutter, stated in his evidence that when he came near this smuggling vessel the former hoisted the Revenue pendant at the masthead, which he described as “a red field with a crown next the mast at the upper part of it.”  He also hoisted the Revenue ensign at the peak-end, the “Union at the upper corner in a red field,” the field of the ensign being also red.  It had a Jack in the corner.  This, then, was exactly in accordance with the Order in Council of 1817 mentioned above.