What if the war fleet enters into “radio silence” zone?
Communication would never be possible without nautical code flags or commonly
known signal flag that are basically used for signaling between two ships or
between ships and the sea shore. These flags are being used to communicate over
the sea since ancient days. Each flag has a different color, shape, markings
and meaning. These flags are hoisted on the ship in a vertical manner in groups
of four and are always read from top to bottom.
- How these flags are read:
- Each flag has an individual alphabetic meaning.
- If some ship is loaded with dangerous goods, a red colored flag is shown
- If someone is hurt and not able to move, a flag with white base and a red diamond is shown.
There are 40 flags
out of which 26 are square flags depicting letters of the alphabets, ten are
numeral pendants, one is the answering pendant and three are substitutes also
known as repeaters. At the sea only few colors can be distinguished such as
red, blue, and yellow, black and white. These colors can’t be mixed
indiscriminately. For clarity flags shown mostly have white and red, blue and
white, yellow and blue or black and white. Others are plain colored with red,
white and blue on them.
Understanding
signals:
- One-flag signals urgency.
- Two-flag are most of the times maneuvering and distress signal.
- Three-flag signals are used for compass points, standard time, relative bearings, punctuations, verbs and also general coding and decoding.
- Four- flag signals are for geographical signs, bearing, ships names, etc.
- Five-flag signals relate to position and time.
- Six-flag signals have a great importance and are generally used to indicate south or north or west or east in longitude and latitude.
- Seven-flags indicate longitude signals with more than a hundred and one degrees.
They can be called a
sailors best friend or life savers. Before radios existed, flags and pennants
were used to communicate at the sea. Certain combinations of two flags had
specific meanings that were same in many languages but could be understood by
sailors for different nations.
