The Mystery of the Missing Guidons

A National Flag is the most sacred thing a nation can possess.” - Thomas Francis Meagher

When historians think about the burning of the Library of Alexandria, it elicits a sharp pain knowing how much knowledge stored in those scrolls was lost in the flames. For the 17th Dragoons, we have our own event that does the same: The sinking of the Caledonia.

After a long, hard tour in the West Indies, earning the nickname "Horse Marines" for being stationed on several ships as troop attachments, the regiment embarked home for England in 1796. On board would have been all the records from their service in the War of American Independence, and the regimental colors.

Yet in a cruel act of historic tragedy, somewhere north of what is now Haiti the head-quarter ship, the Caledonia, foundered at sea, probably caught on a reef during bad weather. The men were saved by boats, and taken on board another ship, the Britannia out of Bristol; but the baggage and regimental books were all lost. Including the guidons carried by the "Death or Glory Boys" in their engagements during the American Revolution.

Thank the French for the Word.

Now some of you might be asking, "What is a guidon?"

A flag. Its just a cavalry flag. Technically defined, it's "a pennant that narrows to a point or fork at the free end, especially one used as the standard of a light cavalry regiment." It comes from a fancy French word meaning "to guide" and was, as most colors were in the 18th century, functionally a marker for the troops to know where they were supposed to be on the battlefield.

And thanks to a reef in the Caribbean, all we have now are handed down accounts and earlier preserved records and Royal Warrants to tell us what those banners looked like.

So How Do We Recreate Something We Don't Have an Original For?

We'll, we've taken it upon ourselves to try and recreate these lost relics as best we can.

We're attempting this by following the same sort of rules any historian uses when attempting to reconstruct a rendering of, say, a Roman Villa in Great Britain. They look at what exists in the material evidence, such as the foundation stone and shards of artifacts cluing them into details like "This was probably a storage area" or "This darker soil shows us this is where the fire pit was". They then look at other surviving structures from the general timeline in other places, and begin making renderings as best they can for the site in question, adjusting as things come to light.

For us, we are lucky that there are several other regimental guidons from the era and after the Revolution that survive. And so we take the Royal Warrants descriptions, cross reference as many contemporary sources as possible, and begin reconstructing as close to our Regimental Guidon's design as we can.

Boiling down the design, the guidons of the era appear to have been two pieces of silk embroidered or painted depending on the regiment and era, and then sandwiched together, being sewn together and allowing with the unique color-schemed fringe binding to be elegantly pinched between the two layers.

At any rate, we're collecting all our documentation thanks to our archives and several very helpful historians. We're so excited to see where this project lands us, hopefully with a banner we can carry with pride, and a story on how we got to dive head first into material culture to make it as true and accurate as is possible.

That is until someone finds us the wreck of the Caledonia.

In which case we're going to need to borrow some snorkeling equipment and hope they waterproofed the leather housing tube REALLY well.