What’s an empire to do? How about a basic design that is repeated over and over and over? Yup. We can check that one off the old imperial to-do list.
Turks & Caicos
Here’s your basic look. It’s the “blue ensign” with a coat of arms or badge for the conquered territory in question.
I like this one for two reasons. First, there’s the total paucity of imagination for the design of the coat of arms. It’s basically an oddly mustardy yellow background with some random things arranged on it.
And what those three random things are is not exactly crystal clear. In the upper left, we have a conch shell. Believe me, it’s a conch shell, okay? In the top right? Well, you got me, bro. (Turns out it’s really just some sort of crustacean.) The bottom? It’s a shuttlecock, from a badminton set, of course. (It’s actually just some kind of cactus.)
Bermuda
A much rarer variant on the same theme uses the “red ensign” (typically used for merchant ships). Canada most famously used one of these before adopting the maple leaf.
What I like about this one in particular is the rather lame rendition of the lion. My guess is it won some contest for elementary school students. Not that the picture on the shield, of a shipwreck, is any great shakes either, mind you.
That shipwreck actually represents how the island was settled. Seems the Virginia Company sent a ship, the Sea Venture, to resupply the colonists on Roanoke Island, in North Carolina. News flash: they didn’t make it.
Interestingly, news of that wreck was what inspired Shakespeare to write The Tempest. Honestly, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
New Zealand
And in certain very special cases, you get to use something other than a lame little coat of arms. Of course, all this really amounted to was a handful of stars (representing the constellation called the Southern Cross). Further, you’d have to share that flag with your next-door neighbor. To be honest, I really don’t know how New Zealand and Australia tell themselves apart.
New Guinea
Just to show that it was actually a lot worse in the past. This is the flag for what is now Papua New Guinea (or, at least the New Guinea part). Ironically, their current flag made it onto my top 10 list. BTW, lots more where this one came from. I'll spare you.
British Indian Ocean Territory
What’s all this then?
You might know this as the Chagos Islands … Diego Garcia? Peros Banhos? Middle of the Indian Ocean? Ah, never mind.
You’ll be happy to know that this crazy, psychedelic hallucination is actually a modern creation, dating back only to 1990. Wikipedia says that “the origin or meaning of the wavy lines is unknown.” Actually, that’s not quite true. These appear on the colony’s coat of arms, and are a traditional heraldic representation of the waves – hence, the sea, which pretty much describes 99.9% of the British Indian Ocean Territory.
Niue
Wow! It’s like they got the guy who designed the cover of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album to do this one. All we need is the Fab Four posing in their brightly colored uniforms, looking stoned out of their minds, over on the right.
Wikipedia is positively dismissive of this one, saying that, “It is very unusual for a flag based on a British design, in having not only a yellow background, but also a defaced Union Jack in the canton.”
Looks like we have the Kiwis to blame. Turns out the yellow represents “the bright sunshine of Niue and is also said to symbolize the warm feelings of the Niuean people towards New Zealand and her people.” The defaced union jack represents the Southern Cross (see above).
What’s the connection with NZ? Once again, according to Wikipedia, Niue is a “self-governing state in free association with New Zealand, and New Zealand conducts most of its diplomatic relations on its behalf.” As you may have already guessed, Nieu is a tiny, barely-there Pacific atoll, somewhat (but not incredibly) close to NZ.
Guernsey
My eyes! My eyes!
This train wreck of the Union Jack, cross of St. George, and something you might see at a NASCAR race is not the current flag of Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands, BTW). Instead, it dates back to the middle of the 19th Century. There is actually some question whether this one was really official.
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