The badges in this collection are currently in the process of being researched further and redrawn. If the badge you are interested in has no accompanying information, please come back again later. Badges are being updated each week, in roughly alphabetical order.
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| Official | ||
| Admiralty Approved | 3rd Sep, 1928 | |
| Motto | Post tenebras lux. (After darkness, light.) | |
| Symbology | The Acheron is the River of Sorrows in Hades, which all souls have to cross. | |
| Design Notes | Black with four wavy bars of silver. | |
Royal Navy ships' badges (often incorrectly called "crests") are distinctive heraldic devices that identify individual vessels, shore establishments, and squadrons. They evolved from informal, often personal, designs into a formal, regulated system that continues today. The story of their development is closely tied to the work of Charles Ffoulkes and the Ships' Names and Mottoes Committee after the First World War, with submarines following a distinct and sometimes chaotic path that reflected their unique operational culture and wartime pressures.
Ships' badges first appeared in the mid-nineteenth century, initially as identification marks on stationery and later on boats to help crews locate their craft in crowded harbours. By the early twentieth century, many ships displayed unofficial badges of widely varying quality and taste. Some commanding officers even carried personal designs from ship to ship. The Admiralty had considered standardisation before 1914, but the outbreak of the First World War delayed action.
The modern system began in 1917–18. When the destroyer HMS Tower was launched, her commanding officer requested a badge. Shipbuilder George Richardson consulted his friend Charles John Ffoulkes, Curator of the Royal Armouries and later first Curator of the Imperial War Museum. Ffoulkes produced a design featuring the White Tower of London. This success led to further commissions, and by late 1918 he had created more than twenty badges.
Ffoulkes was appointed Admiralty Adviser on Heraldry in December 1918, he established the foundational principles that governed the design of official Royal Navy ships' badges.
As Curator of the Royal Armouries and a noted authority on medieval arms and armour, Ffoulkes brought both scholarly knowledge of heraldic tradition and a practical understanding of visual clarity to the task. His principles balanced classical heraldic values with the functional demands of naval use. Devices that needed to be recognisable at a distance, reproducible in paint or metal, and meaningful to the ship's company.
A Ships' Names and Mottoes Committee was established under the Director of Naval Equipment. Ffoulkes set clear design principles. He also required that two brass castings of each design be made, one for himself and one for the Imperial War Museum.
This was the primary and most distinctive requirement. Badges were to be canting or allusive, playing on the ship's name through visual puns, symbols, or direct representation. Examples from the early period include two dice for Venturous, a butting goat for Sportive, a chess knight for Tactician, a butterfly for Inconstant, a key for Sesame, and an eye for Watchful. The principle ensured that the badge was not an arbitrary emblem but a direct expression of the vessel's identity.
Where a name had earlier naval history, battle honours, or classical/mythological connections, these were to be incorporated. This gave continuity across successive ships of the same name and rooted the badge in the Navy's collective memory. For capital ships in particular, designs often drew on earlier traditions or significant events linked to the name.
Practicality was essential. Badges had to function as identification marks on boats, gun tompions, and the ship itself, often viewed from a distance or in poor light. Complex or overly detailed compositions were avoided. Clarity of outline, bold charges, and high contrast were prioritised so that the design could be readily reproduced by dockyard painters or cast in metal without loss of legibility. This principle aligned with broader heraldic ideals of distinctiveness while meeting the specific needs of a fighting service.
Mottoes were optional but, when granted, were expected to be memorable, appropriate, and preferably concise. They reinforced the visual message of the badge and contributed to the ship's esprit de corps. Ffoulkes favoured mottoes that were either traditional, allusive, or resonant with naval values.
The Committee did not impose designs in isolation. Existing unofficial badges and suggestions from commanding officers or ships' companies were reviewed. This pragmatic approach recognised that many vessels already carried well-liked local designs and helped ensure acceptance of the official patterns. Badges already in use could continue, but new ships were restricted to sealed Admiralty patterns that could not be altered without permission.
These principles operated within a standardised visual system that Ffoulkes helped define. Four shapes distinguished ship types.
Each was surmounted by the Naval Crown. Name boards were initially painted black to expose the polished brass lettering and later, colour-coded. For example, gold lettering on green for submarines and smaller vessels. But this pratice was later abandoned.
Designs were submitted as watercolours, painted by the College of Arms, approved by the Committee (capital ships also required royal approval), carved in wood, and cast in brass at Chatham Dockyard to become sealed Admiralty patterns. The first official design was produced in February 1919; HMS Warwick received the first sealed pattern in May 1919.
Ffoulkes' own background strongly influenced the approach. His expertise in armour and weapons encouraged designs that were bold, symbolic, and historically informed rather than purely decorative. The emphasis on simplicity and striking effect echoed traditional heraldic priorities of visibility and instant recognition qualities originally developed for the battlefield and tournament, while adapting them to the industrial realities of twentieth-century warships.
By the time Ffoulkes retired in 1936 he had designed or overseen more than 550 badges. Subsequent Advisers on Heraldry continued to work within the framework he established, though wartime pressures and later changes modified the formal shape system. The core principles, especially the requirement that the design illustrate the name and remain simple and striking, remained influential.
Later Advisers on Heraldry were professional officers of arms from the College of Arms. The shape system was revised after 1939–40: new warships generally received circular badges, and colour conventions were simplified.
Submarines largely stood outside the early official system. Apart from the early experimental boats Nautilus and Swordfish, most submarines carried only numbers or letter and number combinations rather than names, and therefore had no official badges. Unofficial devices did appear: simple circles or diamonds with class letter and number, or more distinctive designs such as the glue pot and brush with the motto "Stick it" used by K4 (lost at the Battle of May Island). The L Class often used a shared "type" badge of laurel branches and a crown.
Named submarines with official badges began in 1926 with the Oberon class, designed by Ffoulkes, and continued with the Parthian class. This practice continued until the outbreak of the Second World War, when submarines largely reverted to letter and number designations. This change has been linked in part to Admiral Max Horton's appointment as Flag Officer Submarines; Horton had served with distinction in numbered boats.
In 1942 Winston Churchill directed that all submarines should have names. The change came too late for several boats (P32, P33, P36, P38, P39, P48, P222, and P311) that were lost before they could be named; P311 was intended to become Tutankhamen. Other named boats were lost before official badges could be designed or issued (Safari, Sahib, Saracen, Sickle, Simoom, Stonehenge, Tempest, Union, Usurper, and Vandal). Some of these produced their own unofficial badges. A number of boats that survived the war also never received official patterns.
The enormous wartime building programme created further complications. Names previously used for destroyers (shield-shaped badges) were reallocated to submarines (originally diamond shaped). Some badges were converted; others were not. In 1940 an Admiralty Fleet Order required circular badges for new names, so that during the war submarines simultaneously carried diamond, shield, and circular designs.
Born in 1905, Broad served his apprenticeship as a fitter at Devonport Dockyard. While there he also drew football cartoons for the Western Evening Herald, demonstrating an early talent for illustration. In 1936 he moved to Barrow-in-Furness as an Admiralty Overseer at Vickers Shipbuilding. His official stamp can still be found on some systems aboard HMS Alliance.
During the Second World War, shipbuilding capacity far outstripped the ability of Chatham Dockyard to produce official ships' badges. The problem intensified after Winston Churchill decreed that submarines should receive names and badges (previously many had only numbers). Broad's drawing skills quickly became known at the Barrow yard, and he began producing designs for vessels built there, mostly, though not exclusively, submarines.
These badges were carved in the shipyard and then cast. Where appropriate, Broad's designs were submitted to the Ships' Badge Committee. Comparison of his originals with the eventual sealed Admiralty patterns shows that most of his work formed the basis of the official versions, usually with only slight alterations (sometimes attributed to the need to involve the College of Arms heralds).
A framed copy of his design for the destroyer, HMS Tenacious, depicting a bulldog's face was presented to Winston Churchill, and one of his Polish submarine designs was sent to General Władysław Sikorski. Some of the original drawings for X Craft (midget submarines) were autographed on the reverse by the crews; those for larger submarines were signed by the officers.
An anecdote illustrates both the demand for his work and the practical constraints of wartime life. When Lieutenant Ian Fraser (later a Victoria Cross recipient) asked Broad to design a badge for the X-craft Sigyn (XE3), Broad pleaded pressure of work and the need to dig his two allotments. Fraser promptly offered a party of sailors to dig the allotments for him so the design could proceed.
Broad is known to have produced badge designs for a substantial list of vessels, including:
Alliance, Anchorite, Auriga, Tapir, Tantalus, Tenacious, Teredo, Terrapin, Tantivy, Tutankhamen, Unbridled, Upstart, Urtica, Vandal, Vengeful, Vigorous, Wizard
Curie (Free French), Dzik and Sokol (Polish), Uredd (Norwegian)
Executioner (XE1), Xerxes (XE2), Sigyn (XE3), Exciter (XE4), Perseus (XE5), Platypus (X5), Excelsior (XT4)
Post-war midget submarines of the Stickleback Class received a shared official "type" badge.
Derwent, Rockwood
In 1961 Broad left Vickers and moved to Birmingham, where he worked as a quality-control officer checking firms producing items for the Ministry of Defence. He retired to Southampton in 1966 and died in 1978.
Cecil Broad's contribution was practical and timely rather than official or heraldic in the formal sense. Broad provided urgently needed, shipyard-level designs during the Second World War's peak of construction, especially for the newly named submarine force and the specialised X Craft. His work ensured that many boats left Barrow with distinctive, name-appropriate badges that later became the foundation of the official Admiralty patterns. In the history of naval heraldry he occupies a distinctive place as a skilled local designer whose practical output directly shaped the visual identity of a significant part of the wartime submarine fleet.
Even after official patterns existed, crews sometimes preferred their own designs. Tally Ho's famous unofficial badge showed a seahorse astride a sinking merchant ship; the captain rejected the official version and reportedly sent it to Chiang Kai-shek. Sanguine replaced a trident with a tiger in bamboo; Subtle used Mr Punch; Teredo a shipworm; Trump a hand of cards. Only one official badge was normally supplied in wartime, so losses of boats or "souvenirs" often meant the permanent disappearance of the pattern.
After 1945 new submarine badges were standardised as circular (with rare exceptions such as Amphion). Unofficial designs became rarer, though some persisted or were later regularised (Upholder adopted a wartime unofficial badge; Ursula changed its polar-bear design). The comprehensive collection once held in the chapel at HMS Dolphin is now at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum.
The Royal Navy's ships' badge system, formalised by Ffoulkes and refined by subsequent Advisers on Heraldry, gave the fleet a coherent visual identity rooted in heraldic tradition. For submarines the path was more irregular-shaped by the late adoption of names, the intense pressures of wartime construction, the practical ingenuity of figures such as Cecil Broad, and the independent spirit of submarine crews.
Today every submarine carries an official circular badge, yet the history of wartime improvisation and unofficial designs remains a distinctive and colourful chapter in naval heraldry.
HMS Onyx was on a visit to Plymouth when the summons came. Her Commanding Officer had just arrived at his home nearby when the telephone rang with orders to take his submarine back to Gosport. He would not be back for another 117 days.
David Suchet narrates the BBC series featuring the Royal Navy's Hunter-Killer submarine, HMS Splendid, on a top secret three-month mission.
After travelling from its Farlane base to San Diego, the sub is charged with testing the first Tomahawk cruise missile, and the crew is followed every step of the way.
Also included is a feature on the sub's new Lieutenant Commander as he undergoes the 'Perisher' selection course.
13 pages added or updated in the last 2 month
Please help to maintain this site by reporting any Errors, Broken Links, Information or Site Issues on this page using this button
If you find this site useful, please consider supporting my work with a small Donation.
Please Note: Donations made using this option go directly to the site owner and not to the Submariners Association.
Thankyou for your support.
The badges in this collection are currently in the process of being researched further and redrawn. If the badge you are interested in has no accompanying information, please come back again later. Badges are being updated each week, in roughly alphabetical order.
|
|
||
| Official | ||
| Admiralty Approved | 3rd Sep, 1928 | |
| Motto | Post tenebras lux. (After darkness, light.) | |
| Symbology | The Acheron is the River of Sorrows in Hades, which all souls have to cross. | |
| Design Notes | Black with four wavy bars of silver. | |
HMS Onyx was on a visit to Plymouth when the summons came. Her Commanding Officer had just arrived at his home nearby when the telephone rang with orders to take his submarine back to Gosport. He would not be back for another 117 days.
David Suchet narrates the BBC series featuring the Royal Navy's Hunter-Killer submarine, HMS Splendid, on a top secret three-month mission.
After travelling from its Farlane base to San Diego, the sub is charged with testing the first Tomahawk cruise missile, and the crew is followed every step of the way.
Also included is a feature on the sub's new Lieutenant Commander as he undergoes the 'Perisher' selection course.
13 pages added or updated in the last 2 month
Please help to maintain this site by reporting any Errors, Broken Links, Information or Site Issues on this page using this button
If you find this site useful, please consider supporting my work with a small Donation.
Please Note: Donations made using this option go directly to the site owner and not to the Submariners Association.
Thankyou for your support.
Comments
Comment by: Grandson of Vincent Walter Meredith on February 25th, 2019
The Trespasser had an unofficial badge also it was a man climbing over a gate. My Grandad told my Nan that they where very upset with the official badge. They tale is confirmed by this passage in the book End of an Era by R. J. Daniel..
For some reason their Lordships of the Admiralty had decided at the outbreak of war that submarines -hitherto names - should no longer have names. Perhaps they imagined that the mention of a P-Boat would have the same mind chilling effect as the mention of a U Boat, little realising that the Germans also gave their boats names. So the Admirals had their P's. On joining P312, I found that the officers had christened her HMS Trespasser and devised a ship's badge of a man climbing over a five bar gate.
All the other Commanding Officers had done the same, Tradewind, Tally-Ho, Truculent, Turbulent, Untiring, Usurper and so on. I mention the last because their do-it-yourself ships badge was a cuckoo in a nest. It was said that matters came to a head when Their Lordships sighted a report from a young CO reporting an incident to HMS Winkle while under his command. In the fullness of time submarines got their names, in the early days those that they had chosen themselves.
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