Portsmouth FC

I’ve written quite a few of these #GetTheBadgeIn posts before and usually the best and most interesting football crests involve those packed with symbolism and meaning. Usually when teams still use variations of their home town’s coat of arms. However. In Portsmouth we have an unusual one. A team with a relatively simple icon – but that can spawn a dozen or so historical theories as it would appear that the jury is a little out on its origins. So, let’s dive in and see what we can discover about Pompey…

Portsmouth Football Club was founded in 1898, born out of the collapse of Royal Artillery F.C., a side suspended by the FA for breaking the amateur code. Out of that vacuum came the new professional Portsmouth FC, formed in the office of Alderman J.E. Pink at the instigation of John Brickwood, the local brewer. Their first ground was Fratton Park, built on farmland, and it remains their home to this day. From salmon pink shirts with claret trim – which earned them the nickname The Shrimps – they shifted to white and navy, before finally adopting the now famous blue shirts in 1913, coupled with patriotic red socks in the 1930s. From then on, they were the Blues, a name chanted to this day.

The badge of Portsmouth FC is rooted in the city’s arms: the star and crescent. Simple in appearance, yet layered with centuries of history. Some argue it derives from Richard the Lionheart, whose Great Seal in the 1190s featured a star and crescent, a mark of his crusading zeal and perhaps even a punning nod to the star Regulus in the constellation of Leo – “Cor Leonis”, the Heart of the Lion. Others link it to William de Longchamp, Richard’s chancellor, who bore a similar device. Another theory traces it further back, to Isaac Comnenus of Cyprus, who fought Richard before losing his banner – itself marked by a crescent and star – to the English king. There are even references to King Stephen’s seal, which bore a seven-pointed star alongside a crescent decades earlier. In truth, the star and crescent stretch back to Byzantium, where a moonlit victory in 339 BC led the city to adopt the crescent of Artemis, later joined by the Virgin Mary’s star, and eventually absorbed into Ottoman heraldry. By the time Richard granted Portsmouth its first charter in 1194, the symbol was firmly attached to the town.

For the city, the star and crescent came to represent royal favour, naval importance, and civic identity. The club adopted it in 1909, stitching it proudly to their shirts, and it has remained their mark ever since. The motto Heaven’s Light Our Guide was added in 1929, borrowed from the Order of the Star of India and fittingly displayed on troopships that sailed through Portsmouth on imperial routes. For Pompey, it linked the badge directly to Britain’s naval heart.

And what a naval heart it is. Portsmouth’s association with the Royal Navy is unrivalled. The city’s Historic Dockyard today houses three of the greatest warships in British history: HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar; HMS Warrior, the revolutionary ironclad that once embodied Victorian naval might; and the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s warship raised from the seabed and painstakingly preserved. Together they form a heritage site without equal – a living museum of maritime power and innovation. For me, there is no bigger and better collection of national heritage anywhere in the UK.

On the pitch, Portsmouth’s history is as proud as their crest. Twice champions of England, in 1949 and 1950, they enjoyed their golden era in the years after the war. They have also lifted the FA Cup twice, in 1939 and memorably in 2008, when Harry Redknapp’s side – with the likes of Sol Campbell, Jermain Defoe and Nwankwo Kanu – brought silverware to Fratton Park once more. Though the years since have been turbulent, with financial crises and relegations, Pompey remain resilient, their fans’ loyalty a mirror of the city’s character.

And then there is the name: Pompey. No one knows quite where it comes from. Some say it was the name of a captured French warship, Le Pompee, later berthed in the harbour. Others link it to drunken sailors interrupting a lecture on the Roman general Pompey with a cry of “Poor old Pompey!” There’s the tale of sailors climbing Pompey’s Pillar in Alexandria in 1781, or of naval charts abbreviating Portsmouth Point as “Pom. P.” Still others point to the firemen (pompiers), or simply naval slang. What we do know is that by 1901, “Play up Pompey” was already being sung on the terraces, making it the oldest documented football chant in the English game.

So, what makes Portsmouth’s badge stand out? It is deceptively simple: an eight-pointed star above a crescent moon. But within that simplicity lies Byzantium, Cyprus, Richard the Lionheart, naval power, and civic pride. Few badges carry such a breadth of history in such a clean design. And when stitched onto a Pompey shirt at Fratton Park, it’s not just a star and a moon – it’s the heart of a city.