Virgin Islands (United States)

Fallowing the launch of the Commonwealth Games this week, I was going to do a post about the flags of the nations and territories taking part compete under, however I have not designed a new flag for a while so I'll lave that for another time.

While most people agree that American State flags are often vexilogically incorrect and generally unattractive, and are quick to offer alterative designs,  territories administered by the American Government are often forgotten about. Of course what an American territory is, is debateable as many are designated differently. The territory I will do in this post is the United States Virgin Islands (often known simply as the Virgin Islands).
The current USVI flag looks like this:

It is based on the Great Seal of the United States. It is quite a horrible flag, I would say one of the worst I know of. Apart from the letters "V.I." there is no local symbolism at all. Even the flag of their neighbours in the British Virgin Islands have their coat of arms on their flag, which while the use of coats of arms on flags is debated at least its local and unique:

 

 

Another reason to change the flag is because the seal it was based upon is not used in the Virgin Islands. The current seal of the US Virgin Islands is below:

 

Interestingly the seal has both a USA and a Danish flag on it. Originally the USVI was the Danish West Indies, but in 1917 the USA bought the colony from Denmark. With this in mind my first design was based on the Danish flag but Americanised a little:

I didn't include any symbolism of the island's name sake Saint Ursula, like the British Virgin Islands did because I didn't want the two territories to share symbols that could lead to confusion. The above flag features a Danish Scandinavian Cross, with three stars on a blue field in the canton like the American flag. The stars representing the three main islands. I was however still unhappy with this as it looks like a Danish flag with a some American stars on it.

However I improved the design a little:

It still has the stars and the Scandinavian Cross, but the use of yellow and light blue really makes this more unique. I used light blue as it appears on some versions of the seal and it reflects the flag of the Danish Colony better as well as the sea. The yellow like the seal represents the tropical climate and sun as well as the distinctive breast of the islands national bird the bananaquit. I was going to include green to represent the land, however this didn't work too well with all the other colours so I dropped it.

 

 

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