Historic Royal St George Yacht Club Ensign a Reminder of Vexillatious Issues
5th April 2021
The Royal St George Yacht Club in 1846 - its last year as the Royal Kingstown YC - is pictured in the Illustrated London News as flying a somewhat ambiguous ensign
The learned word for the study of flags is vexillology . Had we been told that it shares its roots with vexation , it wouldn t have surprised us at all, living as we do just down the road from a region where the interpretation of flegs n omblums is a deadly serious business.
But in fact, it goes back to the vexillum , the special distinctive banner-flag carried by the Roman legions, which thereby became a clear symbol to all those peace-loving primitive tribes, getting on with their idyllic back-to-nature lives out in the boondocks, that trouble was on the way.