MI6 Head's Ink

[Jared]

The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) signing in green ink is a tradition that MI6 plans to keep, at least since an article of 2009. I still wonder what ink that was (pre-WWI), and now is.

 

 

[tenney]

Thank you for reviving this old topic, otherwise I wouldn't have seen it ... and it's quite interesting.

[Bigeddie]

There was a tradition for a ship's captain to sign in green in the royal navy, where Captain Mansfield Cummings came from before SIS (later MI6). This was done so it could be easily recognised what had been entered in a ships log by the person in command. This changed at some point to admirals, so he may have taken the tradition from the navy.

Edited November 24, 2012 by Bigeddie

[sirach]

I read somewhere a theory that the use of green ink by Mi6 and by the green-ink-brigade was not a coincidence ... that the "enthusiasts", when writing to journalists or a PM, wanted either to elevate the importance of their writing (to that of a captain or admiral) or were conspiracy theorists and latched on to the ink used by the spooks.

 

Cummings' use of green ink does pre-date the "Green Ink Brigade"