Flag used on Nares' Arctic expedition, 1875 by the sledge 'Victoria'. A hand-sewn silk sledge flag in the form of a white ensign. The red saltire in the Union Flag has not been countercharged. The inscription 'VICTORIA' and a leafy bough is embroidered in the second canton in yellow. A rope is attached for hoisting.

A sledge party of two officers - Albert Hastings Markham and Alfred Arthur Parr with fifteen men, achieved a record furthest north on 12 May 1876. An outbreak of scurvy prevented them reaching the North Pole 399 miles away. 'Victoria', 'Marco Polo' and a third sledge, each carried a boat to negotiate possible open stretches of water between the ice floes – one boat was abandoned earlier in the journey. Markham says that the sledges carried the standard of the officer in command (a pennant embroidered with his crest) and 'in addition the two boats displayed from their mast heads Captain Nares's Union Jack and a white ensign'. (Albert Hastings Markham 'The great frozen Sea, a personal narrative of the voyage of the ‘Alert’ during the Arctic expedition of 1875-6' (London, 1878) p. 292.) The flags were displayed on special occasions during the journey, as a moral booster.