Exhibits


Title information is available upon specific request. Additional information available upon request to researchers, writers and others demonstrating special circumstances. In some situations, information may not be available.
Exhibition Copy 56
1812: A Nation Emerges, an exhibition at
The National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.


1812 Seventeen-star, Seventeen-Stripe Flag
Hand-sewn wool bunting with cotton stars,
175.3 x 292.1 cm (69 x 115 in.), 1812
Veninga-Zaricor Family / www.zaricorflagcollection.com

This handmade seventeen-star, seventeen-stripe U.S. flag flew on the American schooner Blockade after President James Madison issued a letter of marquee on September 15, 1812, making it a privateer legally permitted to take prizes during the War of 1812. The 128-ton schooner, commanded by Captain Elisha Mix, carried about ten guns and a crew of about seventy and sailed out of Connecticut. She was captured off the island of Saba in the Caribbean on October 31, 1812 by the Charybdis, a 385-ton, eighteen-gun British navy brig with a crew of 121 commanded by Captain James Clephan (1768-1851). In the one-hour and twenty-minute battle, twenty eight officers and men of the Charybdis were killed or wounded to eight on the Blockade. The Blockade was eventually sold as a prize od war, and Clephan retained the flag as a trophy.
No other seventeen-star, seventeen-stripe flag exists in the United States. The rounded, rather than the traditional sharp pointed stars are the flag's most striking feature. The pattern of three rows of irregular stars can be traced back to the American Revolution. The stripes and the canton off the flag are made of handwoven single ply worsted wool. The stars are made of cotton and contain the numerous irregularities of handspun fabric. The reinforcing stitching on the hoist is tarred, and the entire flag bears the hallmarks of being made by either a ship's chandler or sailmaker.
The flag remains in remarkable condition because of the care it received from the Clephan family, where it remained for almost two hundred years before coming to its current owner in 2007.


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Publications


Title information is available upon specific request. Additional information available upon request to researchers, writers and others demonstrating special circumstances. In some situations, information may not be available.
Publication Copy Hart, Sidney, and Rachael L. Penman, 1812: A Nation Emerges, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington, DC, 2012 pp. 146-147.

56

1812 Seventeen-star, Seventeen-Stripe Flag
Hand-sewn wool bunting with cotton stars,
175.3 x 292.1 cm (69 x 115 in.), 1812
Veninga-Zaricor Family / www.zaricorflagcollection.com

This handmade seventeen-star, seventeen-stripe U.S. flag flew on the American schooner Blockade after President James Madison issued a letter of marquee on September 15, 1812, making it a privateer legally permitted to take prizes during the War of 1812. The 128-ton schooner, commanded by Captain Elisha Mix, carried about ten guns and a crew of about seventy and sailed out of Connecticut. She was captured off the island of Saba in the Caribbean on October 31, 1812 by the Charybdis, a 385-ton, eighteen-gun British navy brig with a crew of 121 commanded by Captain James Clephan (1768-1851). In the one-hour and twenty-minute battle, twenty eight officers and men of the Charybdis were killed or wounded to eight on the Blockade. The Blockade was eventually sold as a prize od war, and Clephan retained the flag as a trophy.
No other seventeen-star, seventeen-stripe flag exists in the United States. The rounded, rather than the traditional sharp pointed stars are the flag's most striking feature. The pattern of three rows of irregular stars can be traced back to the American Revolution. The stripes and the canton off the flag are made of handwoven single ply worsted wool. The stars are made of cotton and contain the numerous irregularities of handspun fabric. The reinforcing stitching on the hoist is tarred, and the entire flag bears the hallmarks of being made by either a ship's chandler or sailmaker.
The flag remains in remarkable condition because of the care it received from the Clephan family, where it remained for almost two hundred years before coming to its current owner in 2007.

SH
(Sid Hart)
Publication Images
Book Cover

Book Cover


Title information is available upon specific request. Additional information available upon request to researchers, writers and others demonstrating special circumstances. In some situations, information may not be available.