Red ensign
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| Use |
Civil ensign 
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|---|---|
| Proportion | 1:2 |
| Design | Red with the Union occupying one quarter of the field and placed in the canton. |
The Red Ensign or "Red Duster" is the civil ensign of the United Kingdom.
It is one of the British ensigns, and it is used either plain, or defaced with a badge or other emblem.
It is the flag flown by British Merchant ships since 1707. Prior to 1707 an English red ensign and a Scottish red ensign were flown by the English and Scottish navies respectively. The precise date of the first appearance of these earlier red ensigns is not known, but surviving receipts indicate that the English navy was paying to have such flags sewn in the 1620s.
In 1674, a Royal Proclamation of Charles II confirmed that the Red Ensign was the appropriate flag to be worn by English merchant ships. The wording of the 1674 proclamation indicates that the flag was customarily being used by English merchantmen before that date. At this time, the ensign displayed the English Cross of St George in the canton.
It is probable that the cross-saltire was adopted by the Scots as a national ensign at a very early period, but there seems no direct evidence of this before the fourteenth century. The earliest Scottish records were lost at sea in the ship that was sent to return them to that country, whence they had been carried off, with the Stone of Destiny, by Edward I. Prior to 1707 the Scottish Red Ensign was flown by ships of the Royal Scots Navy, with a Saltire in the canton.
On the legislative union of England and Scotland in 1707 the tiny Scots navy came to an end as a separate force, and the "Union" colours, invented on the union of the two crowns a hundred years before, were inserted in all ensigns, naval and mercantile. An Order in Council of 21 July 1707, established as naval flags the royal standard, the Union flag and "the ensign directed by her Majesty since the said Union of the two Kingdoms", which from the coloured drafts attached to the order is seen to be the red ensign. The white and blue ensigns are not mentioned in this Order; evidently the red ensign was alone regarded as the legal ensign of Great Britain and the others as merely variations of it for tactical purposes.
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