Before 1816 Captain
George Vancouver of the
British Royal Navy visited the
Hawaiian Islands on three occasions during his
1791 to 1795 expedition. At this time, the Hawaiian Islands were divided among
several warring chiefdoms. In February 1794, while at anchorage in
Kealakekua Bay off the
Hawaiʻi island, Vancouver reached a diplomatic agreement with the king (or
aliʻi) of that island,
Kamehameha, who would later unite all the Hawaiian islands and become the first ruler of the
Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Vancouver believed that the agreement reached meant Hawaiʻi island was being ceded to
Great Britain, but historians have argued that the
Hawaiians saw the agreement as establishing a
protectorate. After the proceedings on Vancouver's vessel, a British flag was presented, taken ashore and raised. The flag was either a
British Union Jack, or a
Red Ensign as used by the Royal Navy, which features a Union Jack in the canton. In 1801, the British Union Jack added a
Saint Patrick's Cross when
Ireland joined with Great Britain in a political union. Both pre- and post-1801 versions of the Red Ensign served as the unofficial flag of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi until 1816. File:Red Ensign of Great Britain (1707–1800).svg|Red Ensign of
Great Britain (1707–1800) File:Star-Spangled Banner flag.svg|
Flag of the United States in 1815 with 15 stars and stripes
1816–1845 In April 1816, Kamehameha purchased a
brig from Scottish Captain
Alexander Adams, and arranged for Adams to take command of the ship, which was renamed after
the wife of Kamehameha. As part of the transfer ceremony, Adams wrote that he was "honored to take command under the Flag of His Majesty" In one source, this is described as: "A St. George and St. Andrews Cross in the corner filled in with blue, with field consisting of red and white stripes" which virtually matches the
ensign of the East India Company The Russian navigator
Vasily Golovnin, based on a visit to
Oʻahu in 1818, describes seeing a "national flag" which "consists of seven stripes: red, white, blue, red, white, blue and red, with the English Union Jack in the corner".
1845–Present In 1843, either as an inadvertent mistake, or as a symbolic "reversal" gesture in the wake of the
Paulet affair - a five-month-long, unofficial occupation of Hawaii by
a British naval officer - the flag design was specified to have eight stripes: a white stripe on top followed by the sequence red, blue, white, red, blue, white, red. This new flag was officially unfurled on May 25, 1845, at the opening of the legislative council and remains the same design as used today. ====