French pavillon

The three-coloured french flag dats from the French revolution. Designed in 1790, the colours initially were in the reverse order. They were inverted in 1794 in the current order, blue, white and red, of equal width. In 1853, the ratio of the colours on the flag were modified for marine vessels in order to counter the effect of shortening of the white and particularly red colour bands when flying in the winds. The proportions were set to 30% of blue, 33% of white and 37% of red.

It is rather difficult to find such a flag in the shipchandlers. Therefore, the small tool below should allow for sewing a french marine flag. Marine flags were traditionally done with whole etamine but nowadays, knitted polyester is the most used fabric for marine flags.