Armoria - Themes - creatures of the sea

Perhaps the commonest marine theme in Armoria so far is the scallop shell, or escallop, as it is known to the heralds. The size and precise shape of the shells vary, because there are several species of this type, which belongs to the family Pectinidæ. Usually only one of its shells is shown on a shield, but it is in fact a bivalve, and its shells come in pairs – at least in a live creature. But when they are found on the seashore they are generally single.
Perhaps the best-known example of a scallop shell in daily life is the logo of the Shell oil company – incidentally, from a heraldic point of view, this shell is upside-down.

The appearance of scallops in heraldry is owed to the fact that vast numbers are found on the shore at Compostela, in Galicia, north-western Spain. Since the early Middle Ages it has been a destination of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of St James the Great at Santiago de Compostela. Having made the journey, a pilgrim would sew such a shell onto his or her clothing, generally the upturned hat brim. Many such pilgrims later added these shells to their coats of arms. The Graham family of Scotland is one that displays the scallop. And since the arms of Colonel John Graham of Fintry were borrowed by the town of Grahamstown, the Graham shells are found also in the arms of that city (in its 1862 and 1912 versions), as well as in the arms of Rhodes University, St Andrew’s College, Graeme College, Victoria Girls’ High School and the Hoërskool P J Olivier.

Not immediately noticeable as a sea creature is the red scallop shell worn as a badge on the shoulder of the leopard supporter in the arms of Grahamstown. Similar red scallops appear on Grahamstown’s sinister supporter, a giraffe, and on the same leopard which also serves as the dexter supporter in the arms of the Albany Divisional Council.

Unrelated to the scallops of the Graham family are those borne in the arms of Clan Pringle. Shown here are the arms of the extinct line of the chiefs of Clan Pringle, and the distinctively different arms of Eric Pringle, one of three armigerous members of the clan from the Eastern Cape Province. And a third unrelated group is represented by the arms of Kingswood College and its defunct sister school, Wesleyan High, which have scallop shells borrowed from the arms of the Wesley family.

Lastly there is the dolphin. While modern science has determined that it is a mammal, and some coats of arms show it as one, mediæval scholars reckoned it to be a fish, which is why it traditionally appears in heraldry as a blue or green creature with red fins. In one version of the arms of Woodstock, however, a natural dolphin is shown. However, when a church in an area that had previously belonged to Woodstock adopted a coat of arms, it showed a traditional “fish-dolphin” with the anchor in its arms.

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