Hoisting Signal Flags on the Carrie Winslow

Signal flags identified a vessel to other vessels like a license plate on an automobile. By the time of this photograph vessels were assigned letters which were published in shipping registers. Carrie Winslow's signal was JTQL. Here signal flags are hoisted to send a message to another vessel. The photograph was taken by the captain's daughter , Ruth Montgomery in 1898, aboard the bark Carrie Winslow.