Pennant Number
In the modern Royal Navy, and other navies of Europe and the Commonwealth, ships are identified by pennant numbers (an internationalisation of the term "pendant numbers" which is what they were called prior to 1948). The name pennant number arises from the fact that ships were originally allocated a flag identifying a flotilla or particular type of vessel: for example, in the Royal Navy, the red burgee for torpedo boats, H for torpedo boat destroyers. By the addition of a number pendant to the identifying flag, each ship could be uniquely identified. A pendant/pennant number thus consists of letters and numbers. Where a letter precedes a number it is known as a "flag superior" and where it is a suffix it is known as a "flag inferior". Not all pendants/pennants have a flag superior.
Read more about Pennant Number: Royal Navy Systems, International Pennant Numbers
Famous quotes containing the words pennant and/or number:
“They are preparing to begin again:
Problems, new pennant up the flagpole
In a predicated romance.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a privileged class among the laborers and save the lawless among their number from a most needful remedy available to all men for the protection of their business interests against unlawful invasion.... The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny, and ought not to be made legitimate.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)