We may conjecture that the original signification of the lowered flag was the passing away of the authority which that flag connoted.
After the battle of Lepanto in 1571 the fleet of Don John entered Messina "the galleys gay with all their flags and streamers and towing their prizes with lowered colours."
There were several ways of treating the flag of a captured ship during the seventeenth century. It might be hung below the ensign of the captor on his ensign staff, hung over his stern spread upon a spar or trailing in the water, hung over the stern of the captured ship in like manner[407], or kept to "dress ship" with. When Captain Heaton was in command of H.M.S. 'Sapphire' during the First Dutch War,
he took so many prizes that on a festival day the Yards, Stays, backstays and shrouds being hung with Dutch, French, Spanish and Burgundian colours and pendants variously intermixed, made a beautiful show, and raised the courage of all belonged to her[408].
The practice of hoisting numerous flags in token of rejoicing is so ancient and so widespread that it may be regarded rather as the result of a primitive instinct than the outcome of any formal symbolism, but it may be noted that, although the display of numerous flags by ships in harbour on holy days and days of national rejoicing was allowed, and in some cases even enjoined by authority, the display at sea of "ostentatious bravery" was usually interpreted to indicate some warlike or provocative action on the part of the ship indulging in it. This was certainly the case until the end of the seventeenth century, but with the dawn of the eighteenth a more law-abiding, or perhaps we should say more civilised, spirit began to prevail upon the sea, and these primitive methods of displaying the red rag to the bull began to go into disuse. The practice of displaying flags upon occasions of rejoicing, however, gave rise from time to time to unpleasant incidents between ships of different nations from the indiscriminate use of all the flags in a ship, including national flags of other nations, in the desire to make a fair show; for until the nineteenth century was well advanced both men-of-war and merchantmen carried very few signal flags, which are the only flags over whose relative precedence when hoisted in "dressing ship" no offence can be given.