Navassa Island Unofficial Flag: Designed for 2001 USS Arizona Tribute

Summary: An unofficial Navassa Island flag was designed for first flying Dec. 7, 2001, at the USS Arizona Memorial for the 60th Pearl Harbor attack anniversary.

Navassa Island unofficial flag: Denelson83, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From the perspective of the United States, the official flag for Navassa Island is the national flag of the United States, presently comprising 13 horizontal stripes and 50 five-pointed stars. An unofficial flag designed in 2001 graphically depicts only Navassa Island, an insular plateau silhouetted against sea and sky.

The tiny Caribbean island of Navassa lies in the Jamaica Channel between Haiti and Jamaica. Although disputed by nearby Haiti, the United States has claimed possession of Navassa since the 1857 discovery of the island’s phosphate-rich guano deposits by Baltimore sea captain Peter Duncan. Since the opening of the Panama Canal on Aug. 15, 1914, about 1.3 decades after the cessation of guano mining, Navassa has resurged in importance due to the island’s strategic location at the southern approach of the Windward Passage connecting the Caribbean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean.

Navassa’s location in the direct path of maritime traffic between the Panama Canal and the United States’ eastern seaboard necessitated the construction of the United States’ tallest concrete lighthouse, first lit Oct. 17, 1917, to guide ships through the island’s reef-riddled territorial waters. In 1929, the lighthouse became automated. In 1996, rendered redundant by the Global Positioning System (GPS), the lighthouse was deactivated. On Jan. 16, 1997, administration of the 2-square-mile (5.2-square-kilometer) island was transferred from the U.S. Coast Guard to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Throughout World War II (Sept. 1, 1939–Sept. 2, 1945) the U.S. Navy (USN) maintained an observation post on Navassa Island. The military installation was sited inland between the lighthouse in the southwest and the Upper Plateau Forests in the north.

Two natural resources inventories of Navassa, conducted from July 24 to Aug. 5, 1998, and from April 29 to May 12, 1999, by the U.S. Geological Survey for its parent agency, the U.S. Department of the Interior, led to the establishment of the Navassa Island National Wildlife Refuge and transfer of management from the Office of Insular Affairs to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, both occurring Dec. 3, 1999.

In 2001, unofficial flags for Johnston Atoll, Midway Atoll, Navassa Island, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island were designed specifically for first flying on Dec. 7, 2001, at the USS Arizona Memorial for the 60th anniversary of the surprise military strike against the U.S. naval base at O’ahu’s Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Navassa Island unofficial flag’s ratio of the height of the hoist, the side closest to the pole, to the length of the fly, the bottom or top from hoist to free end, is 3:5. The design features a blue and white horizontal bicolor, with the white band broken at the interface by green. The unofficial flag dramatically depicts the island as an emerald green silhouette, with an exaggeratedly tall, light grey, green roofed lighthouse, against a royal blue sea and a white sky.

aerial, west-to-east view of Navassa in 1999, during second, US Department of Interior-administered inventory of Navassa's natural resources; explorers, film crew and research vessel (R/V) with Australian adventure group/film production enterprise, The Quest, lent support to the expedition: US Geological Survey, Public Domain, via USGS

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Navassa Island unofficial flag: Denelson83, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Navassa_Island_(local).svg

west-east aerial view of Navassa Island: US Geological Survey, Public Domain, via USGS @ http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/navassa/

For further information:

Marriner, Derdriu. "Navassa Island Lighthouse: Crumbling Landmark Deactivated Since 1966." Earth and Space News. Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2015/10/navassa-island-lighthouse-crumbling.html

Marriner, Derdriu. "Navassa Island: US Fish and Wildlife Service Uninhabited Caribbean Island." Earth and Space News. Saturday, Oct. 10, 2015.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2015/10/navassa-island-us-fish-and-wildlife.html