US Navy Jack Flag Patch

Count the stripes on this patch and you get thirteen, with a rattlesnake across them, the First Navy Jack that Navy warships flew at the jackstaff from 11 September 2002 until 4 June 2019. Navy tradition holds that it was the jack of the Continental Navy. Commodore Esek Hopkins's Signals for the American Fleet of January 1776 calls for "the strip'd jack." The exact look of the 1776 jack is still argued over by flag historians. To a sailor, the striped jack with the snake is the oldest flag the Navy claims as its own.

Commissioned warships first flew it from 13 October 1975 through 31 December 1976 for the Navy's and the nation's bicentennials. From 18 August 1980 the active ship with the longest total active service flew it in place of the union jack, passing it on when that ship decommissioned. Beginning on 11 September 2002, Navy ships flew it fleet-wide for the war on terror, while Coast Guard, Military Sealift Command and NOAA ships kept the 50-star jack. On 21 February 2019 the Chief of Naval Operations directed warships back to the union jack from 4 June 2019, the anniversary of Midway. Today the First Navy Jack flies on USS Blue Ridge LCC-19, the oldest active warship apart from USS Constitution and USS Pueblo, which has held the honor since 2014.

The patch is a rectangle 3.5 inches wide by 2.25 inches tall, with a gold merrowed edge and an iron-on backing. Thirteen red and white stripes fill the field, red at top and bottom. A yellow-gold rattlesnake with black banding stretches across them from the upper left, tongue out. Along the bottom stripe, black block letters read DONT TREAD ON ME, spelled as stitched, without the apostrophe.

For seventeen years this was the flag a sailor saw go up at the bow at morning colors in port, while the ensign went up aft. Sailors who served from 2002 to 2019 came up under it, through deployments to the Arabian Gulf, the Mediterranean and the western Pacific. Blue Ridge sailors still see it every day she is moored or at anchor. It is a Navy flag with a long memory.

It fits a jacket shoulder, a range bag or a vest, and a shadow box next to a sailor's ribbons and ship patches. It also makes a good gift for a shipmate who stood colors under it, or a Blue Ridge sailor. Thirteen stripes and a snake, the Navy's own.