ALLEGED NON-COMPLIMENT TO THE BRITISH FLAG.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 708, 26 January 1853, Page 3

ALLEGED NON-COMPLIMENT TO THE BRITISH FLAG.

(From the “Naval mid Military Gazette,” August 28.) “ The Southern Cross,” a New Zealand paper, of the 3rd February hist, afforded us great amusement in the perusal of an elaborate leading article relative to the editor’s opinion of an imaginary slight or indifference to the.honour of the British hag, by an American merchant-vessel not hoisting it, with her own national flags, on the celebration of the Auckland Regatta, the anniversary of the foundation of the New Zealand Settlement. The facts of the case are simply these : —The Regatta Committee,composed of two Captains of the Army, some British Shipmasters, and the Government pilot, first made application for a Colonial brig for their flagship, but, being under refit, was not available ; the American barque Anadir was placed at their disposal, and whose Captain, Swift, it appears by the Committee’s letter to the editor, entered most joyously into the circumstances and pleasures of the occasion ; as “the crowds which thronged the noble vessel’s decks can bear testimony to the cordiality of the welcome given, and the kindly feeling which prevailed throughout the day.” We may presume that the American vessel was thus dressed : — American ensign at her peak, an American ensign at her mizen, a private letter at her main, and another private letter at her fore—by the editor’s paragraph : “ Let us only reverse the position, and fancy a British vessel elected to fill, in an American port, the honorary station which here the Anadir occupied. Let us suppose a British ensign at her peak, a British ensign at her mizen, a private letter at her main, and another private letter at her fore, —and what, we ask would be the natural feeling of the American public !” It is not necessary to surmise any foreign feeling of such a truly mercliant’s-vessel’s display ; but we believe the American Captain at New Zealand paid the British flag a compliment in dressing his ship with exclusively American emblems, and in showing marked attention to the Committee of the British Regatta and his numerous visitors, who have advertised to give him “a public dinner at the * Masonic Hotel.’” Had he floated in the breeze any other national flag, omitting that of the British, he would indeed have committed a glaring insult; and we feel assured that none in the British Army would have been readier to resent it, or to demand apology for the obvious disrespect to their Sovereign’s 'banner, than Captain Travers, R.A., and Captain Parratt, 58th Regt., as well as the patriotic British Shipmasters, who remonstrated with the editor for unjustly accusing the American Captain of slight to the British colours, and inappropriate comments a faultless display of flags yn a day of aquatic ceremony and festivity in which the subjects of both nations united with fraternal feeling. Our contemporary instances the retaliating act of Mr. Driver, Master R.N., when in command of the merchant-vessel Greenlaw, who stoppered the tri-color under her head, whilst in Port Louis, in the Isle of France, because two French vessels had hoisted the British flag in a most insulting position, in their vanity of “ dressing ship,” on a Sunday. But that was a vindicatory defiance of a truly British Naval officer for a premeditated contempt of the British Standard within a British port, by foreign national officers. On this occasion the American Captain, Swift, paid the full compliment of a merchant-vessel to the British flag within a British port, beyond which all would have been supererogatory, and unreasonably splitting a hair of questionable custom, for the editor of the “ Southern Cross” to have expected more from so courteous a Commander of a foreign merchant-vessel.