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Unie van Redding- en Sleepdienst N.V. (Shipping company, Belgium)

Union de Remorquage et de Sauvetage S.A. - Towage & Salvage Union Ltd.

House flag of URS - Image by Ivan Sache, 24 June 2001

Presentation of Unie van Redding- en Sleepdienst
House flag of Unie van Redding- en Sleepdienst
Société de Remorquage à Hélice

See also:

Presentation of Unie van Redding- en Sleepdienst

Unie van Redding- en Sleepdienst (URS) is based in Antwerp. The company provides salvage and pollution services for the Belgian ports, the river Scheldt and further afield.
URS participated, inter alia, in the British Trent case. This tanker was involved in a collision off the Belgian coast in June 1993. URS also participated in the recovery of pollutants and cargo from the wreck of the Cita, which was lost off St. Mary's, in the Isles of Scilly, in March 1997.

Source: World Salvage Directory

Ivan Sache, 24 June 2001

Quoting the company website:

URS was established in 1870, when captain Henri Gerling started with a fleet of six tugs in on the river Scheldt under the name Remorquage à Hélice s.a. (S.à.R.H.) (i.e. tugboats with propeller). The actual name of our company was a result of the alliance, in 1928, between S.à.R.H. and S.A. Remorquage Letzer (established in 1923). URS, together with both its founders, existed as three separate companies until 1974, when the actual group was formed.
They all played an important role during both world wars when they were rendering various services to the allied forces.

A. Broeckaert gives more details on the Tugspotters website (page no longer online):

Founded by Captain Henri Gerling in 1870 in cooperation with John Pickard Best and Walter Ludwig, businessmen. John B. Best was a shipping agent in Antwerp. In 1927 S.à.R.H. starts cooperating with Letzer Towage as Union de Remorquage et Sauvetage S.A. and in 1974 a complete merger takes place with Schelde Sleepvaartbedrijf [Scheldt Towage Co.] leading to the Unie Redding en Sleepdienst of our day.

At a later stage, the S.à.R.H. boats operated from Zeebrugge as well.

Jan Mertens, 19 January 2006

House flag of Unie van Redding- en Sleepdienst

The house flag of URS is light blue with the letters U R S in yellow placed horizontally.

Ivan Sache, 24 June 2001

--- In flags@yahoogroups.com, "Jan Mertens" wrote: > A few years ago (at Zeebrugge, must have been summer 2002) I saw the > URS flag but it had the flag-containing disk, as seen on the web > page, in the centre of a dark blue field. In other words, a > beflagged flag. Should have told you folks sooner, sorry... Well, that message was dated 22 November 2004... And not much remains now of the flag I saw then... See it here on a tug: http://www.seatowage.de/urs/s023.htm Extract of photo to be sent separately, as . Greetings, Jan Mertens / Edegem, BE / jfjmertens @ hotmail.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ be From: "Jan Mertens" Date: Sat Feb 11, 2006 7:00pm Subject: Re: FW: Shipping Houseflags - Belgium - Unie van Redding jfjmertens Offline Offline Invite to Yahoo! 360º Invite to Yahoo! 360º Hello all again, As announced, attachment . The picture is not very big but serves only to illustrate my point - the disk with the flag image is itself placed on a dark blue background. Date: Tue Jul 8, 2008 9:07 pm Subject: URS (BE), current jfjmertens Offline Offline Send Email Send Email Hello all, Concerning the current flag of Belgian tug operator URS, see also FOTW-ws: http://www.crwflags.com/FOTW/flags/be~hfurs.html The link to company on this page is no longer working, but this one may be substituted (Englsh): http://www.urs.be/html/company/profile.htm See postsby Neale as transmitted by Rob ‘FW: Shipping Houseflags - Belgium - Unie van Redding’ (22 Nov 2004) and reply (same day). The house flag bears a flag, see the one on the left: http://www.tugspotters.com/tugs/fotos/passages/internationaal/vlag%201.jpg Photo detail attached as < be~ursv.jpg> . Blue field with a large yellow disk which bears a picture of a flying blue flag – mast, also blue, set at an angle – and stylized yellow initials ‘URS’ on that flag. I saw it at Zeebrugge a few years ago, prosaically, on land. Greetings, Jan Mertens / Edegem, BE / jfjmertens @ hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Deel gratis je vakantiefoto's met al je vrienden! http://spaces.live.com Attachment: (image/pjpeg) be~ursv.jpg [not stored] Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ be 139042 From: Jan Mertens Date: Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:15 pm Subject: Re: URS (BE), current jfjmertens Offline Offline Send Email Send Email Hello all, Following the 8 July 2008 post, throwing in a pennant for good measure: http://www.tugspotters.nl/verslag/heijin/heijin.htm Photos by B. Overdulve, Zeebrugge, 25 March 2004: assisting grounded car carrier ‘Heijin’, Panama. URS pennant, on bow I gather, visible on two photos. Detail attached as < be~ursw.jpg> : simply the flag logo on a blue field, or the house flag in pennant form. Greetings, Jan Mertens / Edegem, BE / jfjmertens @ hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Neem je Messenger vrienden overal mee met Messenger op je gsm! http://www.windowslivemobile.msn.com/?mkt=nl-be Attachment: (image/pjpeg) be~ursw.jpg [not stored]

Société de Remorquage à Hélice

G. Devos & S. Vanfraechem (Volle kracht vooruit! Een eeuw Antwerpse Scheepvaartvereniging. Full steam ahead! A century Antwerp Shipping Federation. Pandora, Ghent, 2001) show on pp. 34-35 a large black and white photography with two insets, captioned "a shipping exhibition (...) held in Antwerp from 13 August to 1 October 1905, which the FMA helped to organise", the FMA being the Fédération Maritime d'Anvers or Antwerpse Scheepvaartvereniging, founded 1901 (Photo courtesy Nationaal Scheepvaartmuseum [National Maritime Museum], Antwerp.)
A number of painted panels, grouped by dock, present shipping companies, agents and the like, listing their main destinations and in many instances showing the house flag. From the roof, many of these actually hang down.

The largest flag in the photography is the house flag of the S.A. de Remorquage à Hélice. The flag is also shown as #109 in Lloyd's book of house flags and funnels of the principal steamship lines of the world and the house flags of various lines of sailing vessels, published at Lloyd's Royal Exchange. London. E.C. (1911), also available online thanks to the Mystic Seaport Foundation.
The house flag is red with a white cross throughout, bearing in the centre the embellished Antwerp municipal arms (with mural crown and rose-studded garland); further, four white serifed initials SRàH are placed in the appropriate corners, for readability. Red and white, of course, are the Antwerp city colours.
Although the Lloyd's version shows a fringe in the Belgian colours, this cannot be made out in the photo; admittedly a thin dark bordering stripe shows up so there may have been a fringe after all. In both cases, there is no fringe or stripe at the hoist side but in my opinion is unnecessary at any rate as the flag itself is characteristic enough.
A panel visible in the photo's background lists H. Gerling as Managing Director and L. Bulcke as Assistant Manager (two important names in Antwerp shipping history), further pointing out that the firm is active on (the) river (Scheldt) and the high seas (presumably the North Sea) as well.

Jan Mertens, 19 January 2006