Signal flags sewn by hand in Leith: the whole International Code, cut from bunting and flown before they leave the loft.
Signal flags sewn by hand in Leith since 1983: the whole International Code, forty flags to a set, cut from bunting and flown on our own halyard before they leave the loft.
The Code
Twenty-six letters and ten numerals. Every one of them means something on its own, and every one is sewn, not printed.
O — Oscar
Man overboard.
On the halyard
Where our flags are flying this season, from a herring drifter's birthday to a tall ship's first sail in twenty years.
Dressed overall from Lerwick to Lyme Regis.
- 06 JunFifie Isla DawnAnstrutherCentenary, dressed overall
- 20 JunBrigantine MorvenLeith DocksFull set of forty, first sail since 2006
- 04 JulSea Cadets TS GannetGrantonTraining sets, 3 × 40
- 18 JulGaff cutter WrenLyme RegisWedding: a dressing line spelling two names
- 09 AugLifeboat station open dayLerwickReplacement O and V, sun-faded
- 29 AugKetch KittiwakeStornowayQ flag and ensign for a North Atlantic crossing
The loft
One Zulu, 120 × 100 cm, from squared paper to the halyard.
- 01DraftDrawn to scale on squared paper: four triangles meeting at the centre.
- 02CutBlack, yellow, blue and red bunting, chalked with a 1 cm seam allowance.
- 03SewTwo diagonal seams, lapped and stitched twice at four stitches to the centimetre.
- 04HeadCanvas heading tape on the hoist, stamped, with an ash toggle and a spliced eye.
- 05FlyEvery flag goes up our own halyard in the yard before it is folded and sent.
- Panels
- 4
- Seams sewn
- 0 cm
- Stitches
- 0
- Wind
- calm
Signal archive
Six hoists worth knowing by heart, from a battle order to the flag that brings a crew back aboard.
Since 1857
The code is older than the loft. We only sew it.
In 1857 the British Board of Trade published the Commercial Code of Signals: eighteen flags that could be combined into more than seventy thousand messages.
The code has been rewritten since, most recently in 1965, in force from 1969, and it is still the idea we sew every day: a square of cloth that can be read across open water, in any language, by anyone who owns the book.
Tack & Halyard began in 1983 in a sail loft on the Water of Leith. Six machinists, one long cutting table, and a yard with a halyard where every flag is flown before it is folded.
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