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Bunker Hill Flag (U.S.)

Historical

Blue Bunker Hill flag

See also:

The Blue Bunker Hill Flag

image by Rick Wyatt, 18 July 2001

The "Bunker Hill Flag" with the blue field was an error made by a person coloring flag charts a couple of hundred years ago. The flag, representing New England, was correctly printed with heraldic hatching to indicate a red field, but it was colored blue by mistake. That one error has lived to this day as fact. The report by the North American Vexillological Association in the 1970's concluded that the Americans probably didn't carry any flag at Bunker Hill, they were such a rag-tag outfit. The most famous painting of the battle shows a flag with the red field with green pine tree in a white canton, no cross. Unfortunately, the British flag in the same painting has the St Andrew's cross in blue on a red canton, or some such mish mash. So the artist may not have been all that careful about his rendition of the New England flag. The same flag but with a circle of stars in the field is a copyrighted design by a company in Essex, Massachusetts, and is to represent the New England States.
Nick Artimovich, 6 February 1996

The commercially available Bunker Hill Flag is this blue flag.
William M. Grimes-Wyatt, 7 February 1996