The Serapis flag is one of my all time favorites, a big reason being the history behind it. The story has a little more to it because of how John Paul Jones acquires the flag.

From Wikipedia:

“* At the 1779 Battle of Flamborough Head, U.S. Navy Captain John Paul Jones captured the Serapis, but his own ship, the Bonhomme Richard sank, and her ensign had been blown from the mast into the sea during the battle. Jones, now commanding the Serapis without an ensign, sailed to the island port of Texel, which was run by the neutral Dutch United Provinces. Officials from Britain argued that Jones was a pirate, since he sailed a captured vessel flying no known national ensign.

A year earlier, Arthur Lee, U.S. commissioner in France, wrote in a letter to Henry Laurens that the U.S. ships' "colors should be white, red, and blue alternately to thirteen" with a "blue field with thirteen stars" in the canton.[1] Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, ambassadors to France, wrote a similar description of United States flags...*”