Serapis flag
The ensign John Paul Jones flew on the captured British warship Serapis at Texel in the Dutch Republic in 1779, with stripes of red, white and blue and thirteen eight-pointed stars on blue. It was made to the description Benjamin Franklin and John Adams had given of the American flag, and the Dutch recorded it in a sketch.
Meaning
In October 1778 Franklin and Adams told the ambassador of Naples that “the flag of the United States of America consists of thirteen stripes, alternately red, white, and blue”, with thirteen white stars on a blue field in the upper corner by the staff, as the Franklin Institute and the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich both quote them. That was not what Congress had resolved in 1777, which was stripes “alternate red and white”, but flag sheets of the 1780s and 1790s do show flags with stripes of three colours, Ulrich writes. The flag goes by Franklin’s name as well as the ship’s. Its users today are the 111th Infantry Regiment of the Pennsylvania National Guard, founded by Franklin as an association in 1747, which the Franklin Institute and a Guard article on DVIDS, the Defense Department’s news service, both call the only unit allowed to carry it; it is also on the crest of the USS John Paul Jones, and the Franklin Institute shows it in its lobby.
Origin and history
Jones’s Bonhomme Richard took HMS Serapis off Flamborough Head in September 1779, and Jones sailed the Serapis to Texel, in Dutch territory. There British officials called for him to be arrested for piracy, the Franklin Institute writes, because the Serapis had lost its flag in the battle and was sailing without one. A flag was quickly made to the design Franklin and Adams had described, and a sketch of it went into the Dutch register of national ensigns. Jones stayed at Texel into December. When the Dutch admiral asked whether his other ship, the Alliance, was French or American, Jones refused to wear any but the American flag, George Henry Preble recorded in 1872, and on 27 December he wrote from sea that he was “under my best American colors”.
How the sources describe it
The Franklin Institute describes the flag in its lobby as thirteen eight-pointed stars with red, white and blue stripes, and says the flag became official in September 1779, though Congress’s resolution of 1777, as the House of Representatives’ history “Our Flag” quotes it, had asked for stripes “alternate red and white”. The DVIDS article on the 111th Infantry in Iraq in 2009 describes the regiment’s Franklin flag with thirteen red, white and blue stripes and thirteen six-pointed stars.
Often confused with
The Betsy Ross flag has only red and white stripes and its thirteen stars in a circle. The Grand Union flag, which Jones raised on the Alfred in 1775, has the British union in the canton instead of stars.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of the United StatesThe Stars and Stripes as flown today, red and white only.Read next
- Next in Historical flagsAppeal to Heaven flagA white flag with a green pine tree and the motto “An Appeal to Heaven”, flown from 1775 by the schooners George Washington fitted out to intercept British ships, and made the colours of the Massachusetts navy in April 1776.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsGateway of the Sun (the Staff God)A doorway cut from a single block of andesite at Tiwanaku, near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, carved above the opening with a god holding a staff in each hand. Who the figure is remains open: Britannica lists a sun god, a thunder god and Viracocha among the readings.
See also
Grand Union flag, Betsy Ross flag, Jolly Roger, Blackbeard’s flag, Calico Jack’s flag, Bartholomew Roberts’s flag.
Sources
- Benjamin Franklin’s United States Flag, The Franklin Institute blog, The Franklin Institute, post text
- How Betsy Ross Became Famous, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “How Betsy Ross Became Famous: Oral tradition, nationalism, and the invention of history”, Common-place, Common-place: The Journal of Early American Life, article text
- National Guard unit formed by Benjamin Franklin still defending freedom, Staff Sgt. Jon Soles, “National Guard unit formed by Benjamin Franklin still defending freedom”, DVIDS, July 2009, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (U.S. Department of Defense), article text
- Our Flag: Origin and Progress of the Flag of the United States (Preble 1872), George Henry Preble, Our Flag. Origin and progress of the flag of the United States of America (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1872), Internet Archive, p. 167
- Our Flag (H. Doc. 100-247), section 1, House Document 100-247, Our Flag: “The History of the Stars and Stripes”, U.S. House of Representatives (via NPS History), The History of the Stars and Stripes
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 14, 2026. How we research
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