Signal Book or 'Crib'

‘On 21st October 1805, as HMS VICTORY was preparing for battle, Lord Nelson said to his signal lieutenant, John Pasco:

“Mr. Pasco, I wish to say to the fleet, England confides that every man will do his duty, and,” he added, “you must be quick, for I have one more signal to make, which is for close action.”

“If your lordship will permit me to substitute the word ‘expects’ for ‘confides’”, suggested Pasco, as his son later recorded[1], “the signal will soon be completed, because the word ‘expects’ is in the signal vocabulary, but the word ‘confides’ must be spelt at length.”“

"That will do, Pasco, make it at once,” said the Admiral, apparently pleased with the alteration. It was accordingly made, and directly after followed the signal for “Close action.”’

By the time of Trafalgar, British flag signalling had come a long way. During the Anglo-Dutch wars of the seventeenth century, a single page in the fighting instructions issued by James, Duke of York, sufficed to illustrate all the signals available. Pasco by contrast had two separate and extensive codes at his disposal: the 1799 'Signal book for ships of war', based on a numerical system, which included Nelson's favourite signal, no.16 ('Engage the enemy more closely'), and the 'Telegraphic signals' devised by Home Popham, which provided a vocabulary and alphabetic flags from which the signaller could construct any further message required: it was this second, supplementary code that enabled Nelson to send his famous "England expects..." message. He had been keeping Pasco busy before that: his second-in-command, Admiral Lord Collingwood, when he saw yet another signal going up, but before he knew what it said, was reported to have exclaimed “I wish Nelson would stop signalling. We know well enough what to do."

No one could memorise the whole of such a complex pair of codes, but everyone wanted to know what the signals meant as soon as they went up. Only a single set of signal books was permitted per ship, to reduce the risk of the code falling into enemy hands (as had indeed happened in 1803, requiring a hasty alteration to the flags in use); but it was common, if against all regulations, for officers to compile their own secret cribs to help them read the messages. Amongst the hundreds of signal books in the Admiralty Library collections, alongside edition after edition of the official signal books, are about forty such cribs. Some are tiny, in order to be easily concealed; others are written out with great care and exquisitely decorated with flags, wind-roses, and small vignettes of ships and battles; a few were the property of men who would become famous commanders in their time; some are scruffy, bearing the marks of wear and tear at sea - one having come through the battle of Trafalgar in the pocket of a Master's Mate who was wounded in the battle, and who later gave it to his brother as a memento. It sits on a shelf now alongside much grander volumes, but, for all their vellum and morocco and gilt decoration, their hand-painted flags and fine copperplate, none of the Library’s signal books is more treasured.

[1]A Roving Commission: Naval Reminiscences, by Commander Crawford Pasco RN (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1897) Historic Branch HMNB Portsmouth