Maritime flag signalling

The Marryat 's Code of Signals was a system of flag signals, which was introduced in 1817 by the English naval officer Frederick Marryat. It was first used for signaling and identification of commercial vessels over long distances at sea.

In Marryat code for the digits 0 to 9, there was one on the shape and color of certain flag and pennant single group that varied the importance of number flags.

Each ship has a four-digit number 1-9876, and one of the (first) group was assigned to it, in the individual vessel number number no number was included twice. In case the signal individual ship hoisted above the other flag and his group including the number of digits after the flags for the allocated number.

Owners who wish to participate in the signal system had the Marryat organization to join and then given the extensive code - books.

To quantitatively to have enough room, there were initially two groups with whom thus a total of 19,752 vessels were detected. Later, other groups of British and except for British warships, a number group for lighthouses, harbors and other geographical locations as well as a number group for standardized notification rates were introduced parallel to the two groups of numbers for merchant ships.

With the very top seeded group pennants for geographical locations and their number flags, for example, could a ship its origin signal, while a destination port specification was signaled by the position of the same group pennant at the lowest position.

The system was redesignated in 1854 in The Universal Code of Signals for the Mercantile Marine of All Nations, and until about 1890 in use, mostly in British, American and German ships. The last update of the corresponding codebooks took place in 1879. Was afterwards succeeded by the International flag alphabet.