Pennant Number
In the modern Royal Navy, and other navies of Europe and the Commonwealth, ships are identified by pennant numbers (an internationalisation of the term "pendant numbers" which is what they were called prior to 1948). The name pennant number arises from the fact that ships were originally allocated a flag identifying a flotilla or particular type of vessel: for example, in the Royal Navy, the red burgee for torpedo boats, H for torpedo boat destroyers. By the addition of a number pendant to the identifying flag, each ship could be uniquely identified. A pendant/pennant number thus consists of letters and numbers. Where a letter precedes a number it is known as a "flag superior" and where it is a suffix it is known as a "flag inferior". Not all pendants/pennants have a flag superior.
Read more about Pennant Number: Royal Navy Systems, International Pennant Numbers
Famous quotes containing the words pennant and/or number:
“They are preparing to begin again:
Problems, new pennant up the flagpole
In a predicated romance.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“My tendency to nervousness in my younger days, in view of the fact of a number of near relatives on both my father’s and mother’s side of the house having become insane, gave some serious uneasiness. I made up my mind to overcome it.... In the cross-examination of witnesses before a crowded court-house ... I soon found I could control myself even in the worst of testing cases. Finally, in battle.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)