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.