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Continental Navy Jack

Naval History and Heritage Command Senior Historian Dr. Mike Crawford discusses the history behind the Continental Navy Jack. The jack is a small flag that flies from the jack staff, a flagpole at the bow of a ship, aboard a commissioned warship when that ship is in port. The best evidence leads to the conclusion that the design of the jack flown in ships of the Continental Navy consisted of red and white horizontal stripes. A century later, in the second half of the nineteenth century, a series of errors led the flag historian George Henry Preble to the mistaken belief that, superimposed on the stripes, the Continental Navy jack had a stretched out snake with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me” across the bottom. It is true that this motto was commonly used during the Revolutionary War, appearing on various military accoutrements, such as drums and flags, in conjunction with the image of a snake, but that snake was always coiled, ready to strike, not stretched out. Preble’s interpretation of the Continental Navy jack was generally accepted and appeared in dictionaries and other reference works. In 1976, to mark the bicentennial of independence, the U.S. Navy adopted Preble’s rattlesnake flag to be flown aboard Navy ships as the jack for the year, and after the attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001, the Secretary of the Navy ordered the rattlesnake flag flown as the jack to symbolize America’s defiance to terrorism.