Monday 15 April 2013

St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha


Since 2009 this British overseas territory has officially had 3 equal parts: St Helena, Ascension, and Tristan Da Cunha.  StHelena and Tristan have flags, and Ascension's proposal will no doubt be officially approved eventually.
When the territory was St Helena and dependencies, one could take the St Helena flag as the flag, but now all parts are equal, the territory as a whole seems to lack a flag. 
First I thought of using part of the individual coat of arms for each island on the arms for the new flag. The bird is for Saint Helena, the tortoise for Ascension Island and the blue and white diamond for Tristan da Cunha. The three stars are for the three islands:
The proposal from my friend Leonardo Piccioni is below:
santa-helena.png
Proposal by Leonardo Piccioni

The Portuguese ship represents the fact that the Saint Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension were all discovered in name of Portuguese crown. The Latin cross represent the fact that St. Helen of Constantinople is referred as who discovered the "True Cross", the cross where Christ was crucified. It's red in a reference to English flag.
I like the idea of the Portuguese cross so I added it to the chief of the arms on the next proposal.
I used sea shells to represent the individual islands, because I wanted something more creative than stars. Ships are evident on the arms of all three islands and Leonardo's design, so the islands clearly have large maritime links and a relationship with the sea. I thought an anchor would be a better way to demonstrate this from a heraldry point of view. It also represents hope or steadfastness. The colours of red, white, blue, green and gold comes from the individual arms of the islands: 

I also had ago at a complete set of arms. The crest has the ship of the Ascension crest and the naval crown of Tristan da Cunha. The supporters are from Tristan da Cunha and Ascension coat of arms. The motto "Our Faith makes us Unshakable" is original but has element of the Tristan da Cunha (Our Faith) and St Helena (Unshakable) mottoes:

All Comments welcome:
All designs are by me unless stated otherwise.








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