The smallest state flies one of the sparest flags in the country: a gold anchor on white, ringed by thirteen gold stars, with one word on a blue ribbon underneath. HOPE. No seal, no scenery, no state name. Rhode Island arrived at this design in 1897, but the anchor it carries is far older, older than the state, older than the United States. It has been Rhode Island's mark since the 1640s, which makes this one of the oldest emblems in continuous use in American public life.
An anchor for dissenters
Rhode Island began as a refuge. Roger Williams founded Providence in 1636 after Massachusetts banished him for his religious views, and the settlements that grew around Narragansett Bay collected Baptists, Quakers, and assorted dissenters unwelcome elsewhere in New England. When the colony adopted a seal in the 1640s, it chose an anchor, and the word Hope soon joined it.
The pairing is scriptural. The Epistle to the Hebrews describes the hope of salvation as "an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast," and for a community built by the shipwrecked of other colonies, the image did double duty: a maritime emblem for a seafaring colony, and a statement of faith for people who had staked everything on liberty of conscience. Anchor and motto have appeared on Rhode Island's seals and documents ever since, through colony, statehood, and every rechartering in between.
The emblem went to war before it went on a state flag. During the Revolution, Rhode Island regiments carried white flags bearing a blue anchor, with stars in a blue canton. The resemblance between those regimental colors and the modern flag is close enough that the 1897 designers were plainly looking backward.
Three flags in twenty years
For most of the nineteenth century Rhode Island had no civil flag at all. The General Assembly finally created one on March 30, 1877, placing the anchor among thirty-eight stars, one for every state then in the Union. The design lasted five years. On February 1, 1882, a new law substituted a blue flag with a gold anchor circled by thirteen gold stars, trading the ever-growing national star count for the fixed number of the original colonies.
The blue flag lasted fifteen years. Legislation passed in 1897 brought back the white field of the Revolutionary regimental flags, kept the thirteen stars, and added the blue ribbon with HOPE in gold letters below the anchor. The current flag took effect on November 1, 1897, and Rhode Island has not touched it since. Three flags in two decades, then more than a century and a quarter of leaving well enough alone.
The thirteen stars carry a small irony. They honor Rhode Island's membership in the original thirteen, but the state was the most reluctant member of the club. It refused to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention and ratified the Constitution only on May 29, 1790, dead last, under economic pressure and by two votes in its convention. The flag commemorates a union the state very nearly sat out.
The almost-square flag
Rhode Island General Laws section 42-4-3 prescribes the flag's dimensions with New England exactness: five feet six inches on the fly, four feet ten inches deep, a ratio of 29:33. That is nearly square, an unusual shape shared by almost no other state flag, and the statute finishes the specification with a yellow fringe for official use.
Almost nobody follows it to the letter. Commercial flag makers cut Rhode Island flags to the standard 2:3 and 3:5 proportions used for every other state, and the squarish statutory shape mostly appears in the fringed ceremonial flags standing in courtrooms and the State House. The law and the marketplace have politely ignored each other for over a century.
One thing the flag no longer matches is the state's former name. Until 2020 the state was officially "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations," the longest official name of any US state attached to the smallest territory. Voters removed the second half by referendum in November 2020, given the word plantations' associations with slavery. The flag needed no revision; it had never carried the name.
Hope, at street level
Rhode Islanders encounter the anchor constantly: on the state seal, on government letterheads and public buildings, and in the name of Hope Street in Providence. The flag itself has escaped the redesign debates that churn through other states, largely because there is little to fix. It is simple, old, and specific to the place.
In the North American Vexillological Association's 2001 survey of state and provincial flags, the designs that scored best were the ones with a single strong emblem and no text-heavy seal. Rhode Island's flag mostly fits that profile, its one indulgence being a four-letter word that has been attached to the anchor for nearly four centuries. If any state flag has earned its motto ribbon, it is the one that has been hoping since 1640-something.
References
[1] "Flag of Rhode Island," Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Rhode_Island
[2] Rhode Island General Laws § 42-4-3, description of the state flag.
[3] "Rhode Island," US Flags Design. https://usflags.design/rhode-island/
[4] "Rhode Island state flag," Britannica Kids. https://kids.britannica.com/students/assembly/view/55751
[5] North American Vexillological Association, "2001 State/Provincial Flags Survey."