page_title: First Navy Jack
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: First Navy Jack / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Naval jack of the United States from October 1975 to December 1976; this differs from the September 2002 to June 2019 version in that the snake doesn't have red spots.
context_page_description: The First Navy Jack was the naval jack of the United States from 1975 to 1976 and again from 2002 to 2019. It was authorized by the U.S. Navy and was flown from the jackstaff of commissioned vessels of the U.S. Navy while moored pierside or at anchor. It is now only used as a naval jack by the oldest active warship in the U.S. Navy. The design is traditionally regarded as that of the first U.S. naval jack flown in the earliest years of the United States' existence, though this is disputed by the historical record.
  The First Navy Jack was replaced as the U.S. naval jack by the U.S. Union Jack on June 4, 2019, by order of the Chief of Naval Operations.
context_section_description: In late 1775, as the first ships of the Continental Navy readied in the Delaware River, Commodore Esek Hopkins issued, in a set of fleet signals, an instruction directing his vessels to fly a "striped" jack and ensign.  The exact design of these flags is unknown. Since about 1880, this jack has traditionally been depicted as consisting of thirteen red and white stripes charged with an uncoiled rattlesnake and the motto "Dont Tread on Me" [sic]; this tradition dates at least back to 1880, when this design appeared in a color plate in Admiral George Henry Preble's influential History of the Flag of the United States.  Recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that this inferred design never actually existed but "was a 19th-century mistake based on an erroneous 1776 engraving".
  In 1778, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sicily, thanking him for allowing entry of U.S. ships into Sicilian ports.  The letter describes the U.S. flag according to the 1777 Flag Resolution, but also describes a flag of "South Carolina, a rattlesnake, in the middle of the thirteen stripes."
  The rattlesnake had long been a symbol of resistance and defiance to the Crown in the thirteen American Colonies. The phrase "Don't Tread on Me" may have been coined during the American Revolutionary War, a variant perhaps of the snake severed in segments labelled with the names of the colonies and the legend "Join, or Die" which had appeared first in Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754, as a political cartoon reflecting on the Albany Congress.
  The rattlesnake (specifically, the Timber Rattlesnake) is especially significant and symbolic to the American Revolution. The rattle has thirteen layers, signifying the original Thirteen Colonies. Additionally, the snake does not strike until provoked, a quality echoed by the phrase "Don't tread on me." For more on the origin of the rattlesnake emblem, see the Gadsden flag.
  Typically the flag's rattlesnake is depicted with red scales on its back, but some have depicted the snake as all-gold.
caption: Variant featuring all-gold rattlesnake; typically seen during the 1970s.
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