Fort Mercer Flag

The Fort Mercer Flag is a historical variant of the early Stars and Stripes, distinguished by its inverted color scheme of thirteen alternating blue and white stripes surmounted by a red canton containing thirteen white five-pointed stars arranged in a circle, flown over the Continental Army's Fort Mercer during the Battle of Red Bank on October 22, 1777.^[Built as an earthen redoubt on the New Jersey shore of the Delaware River to obstruct British relief of their Philadelphia garrison, Fort Mercer hosted a small force under Colonel Christopher Greene that decisively repelled a Hessian column of nearly 2,500 troops commanded by Carl Emil Kurt von Donop, inflicting around 400 enemy casualties while suffering around 40 of its own, including 14 killed.^[The flag's precise rationale for reversal remains undocumented, though it coincided with a rare American tactical success in the 1777 Philadelphia campaign, delaying British naval dominance.

he Fort Mercer Flag consists of thirteen horizontal stripes alternating between blue and white, a design that reverses the red-and-white striping of the canonical Stars and Stripes. In the upper hoist corner, it bears a rectangular red canton containing thirteen white five-pointed stars arranged in a circular pattern.^[No original artifact survives, so material composition is inferred from contemporaneous American military flags, which were typically constructed from wool bunting for durability in field conditions or silk for finer presentations. Dimensions are undocumented for this specific flag, but period garrison ensigns often measured approximately 20 feet in height by 38 feet in length to ensure visibility from afar. Contemporary sketches or period illustrations potentially associated with Fort Mercer, such as those depicting early Continental banners, show similar proportions and construction techniques, though none definitively match this variant.

These flags are made to order and take about 3 weeks to produce and ship.