Flag of the United States John Paul Jones used a variety of 13-star flags on his U.S. Navy ships including the well-documented 1779 flags of the Serapis and the Alliance. The Serapis flag had three rows of eight-pointed stars with stripes that were red, white, and blue. The flag for the "Alliance", however, had five rows of eight-pointed stars with 13 red and white stripes, and the white stripes were on the outer edges. Both flags were documented by the Dutch government in October 1779, making them two of the earliest known flags of 13 stars. Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey, a naval flag designer,
Triband (flag) of Colombia). The most famous complex triband is arguably the national flag of Canada, which is charged with a maple leaf and has bands of uneven size. The ratio of the bands on this latter flag (1:2:1) has led to the term Canadian pale to refer to any central vertical band on a triband which is twice the size of the bands on either side. Some tribands, such as the flag of the Gambia, are fimbriated. This means that between the stripes there are narrower stripes. This is sometimes done to increase contrast between multiple stripes or to follow the