^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Hampton Bays, New York (U.S.)

Suffolk County

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 2 September 2005

Description of the flag

See also:

Description of the flag

A (light?) blue flag, approx. 3:5, charged with a flat representation of an ICS "hotel" signal flag (approx. 5:8 white and red vertical bicolor) on the top hoist and with a flat representation of an ICS "bravo" signal flag (red swallowtail) on the bottom fly, these standing for the initials of "Hampton Bays". Overall, partly overlapping the bottom fly of "hotel" and the upper hoist of "bravo", a large white disc bearing a small black (rope-less) anchor and the wording "Hampton Bays" arched a along its top edge and "Settled 1740" arched a along its bottom edge, set in red sans capitals.

Based on a good idea, quartered signal flags on a contrastive background, a quite uninspired design was attained, and even its cloth realization was inaccurate: The flat photo found by Valentin shows that the anchor is not centered on the disc, that the disc is not centered on the flag and that the two flags' corners do not meet and that.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 2 September 2005

The hamlet of Hampton Bays is part of the Town of Southampton, in Suffolk County, NY. Its flag was adopted by a contest run by a voluntary civic association, the Hampton Bays Beautification Association www.hbba.net/history.html - "Another important area that HBBA deals with is improving the physical appearance and aesthetics of our Hamlet. This is done through many ways... Some of these include:... the Hamlet flag project with its product... our Hamlet Flag."

This contest was held about 2000- from an HBBA webpage no longer online but in the Google cache and dated "Fall 2000: "This important sense of spirit has been fostered by activities such as our annual free concerts on the beach, our holiday decorations, our voice in the public forums, our flag contest and new Hamlet flag, ..."

Flags for so-called hamlets in New York State are pretty rare. As used in NY "hamlet" is an unofficial term for named areas without any official existence as a civil subdivision. The US Census Bureau refers to communities such as these as "other designated places". Hamlets in NY are merely parts of Towns and have no separate incorporation nor have they any governmental structure apart from the larger town government. Thus any hamlet flags which exist will have to come about by the initiative of interested private citizens.

Ned Smith, 2 September 2005