Pilot Flags (Denmark)

Last modified: 2025-08-30 by klaus-michael schneider
Keywords: denmark | pilot |
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• Danish Pilot Flags
• Ordinary Pilot Flag
• Pilot Steamships Signa
• Particular Pilot Flag

• Jack
• Denmark

Danish Pilot Flags

Ordinary Pilot Flag

by Željko Heimer, 10 June 2001

White bordered national flag, as (was) customary for this kind of flags. The caption explains that it is used only as pilot call sign while pilots themselves use ensign 21 (the Naval Auxiliary Ensign). The unusual figures for the ratio are result of adding 14 units of white border all around the standard sized national ensign 70x85 units (30+10+30 x 30+10+45). So:
Željko Heimer, 3 June 2004

The flag used by a ship to request a pilot. This flag is shown somewhat differently in later sources than the Flaggenbuch (1939) (for instance, Pedersen (1970) and Pedersen (1979)). Here the field within the border is square and red with a white cross throughout, that is, it is not in the shape of the Dannebrog.
Paige Herring 23 Apr 1998

Pilots don´t use this type of flag any more for identifying themselves, and the call for a pilot is nowadays not made by flag. Is this flag still authorised?
Željko Heimer, 10 June 2001

Album des Pavillons (2000) does not have the white bordered pilot flag present although it was still in the 1995 issue and subsequent corrections.
Željko Heimer, 12 June 2001

The page Danske Lodser (Danish pilots), based on Maritim kontakt 11, Kommandør Sølling ea., also includes this about flags:

(About Poul Løwenørn who became "Overlods" (pilot authority) 23 December 1796.)
(translated)

For Løwenørn it was also important to make certain that the qualified and officially appointed pilots would be recognisable as such for the outside world.  Where pilot craft was concerned, most pilots used at that time to fly a red cloth in the white main sail, and Løwenørn had this custom laid down in the multitude of new pilot regulations as an obligation and a right for authorised pilots only.
He further introduced a pilot flag, of which the upper quarter part was the Dannebrog, while on the rest of the white flag stood painted "LODS" or "PILOT". This pilot flag was used until 1824, when the pilot call flag was changed to the national flag surrounded by a white border. This flag was in valid until 1978.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 20 June 2001

Pilot Steamships Signal

White over red bicolour rectangular flag. If I conclude correctly this flag would be used on one side of the mainmast by these ships as a signal in addition to the Naval Auxiliary Ensign at stern. These may have been abolished from usage until today.
Željko Heimer, 3 June 2004

Particular Pilot Flag

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