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House flags of shipping companies

Last modified: 2005-04-29 by antónio martins
Keywords: house flag | shipping company | funnel |
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See also: Other sites:
  • The Mystic Seaport Foundation in Mystic, Connecticut, has digitized a number of old maritime documents and references, including:reported by Joe MacMillan, Apr 2004
  • Reedereiflaggen (House Flags) at Josef Nüsse's Ships & Flags website. The site is a very good source since it shows pictures of real flags. The website disclaimer says that most of the companies whose house flags are shown there are gone out of business.
    reported by Ivan Sache, 23 Aug 2002
  • Flags & Funnels, by Heinrich Fischbach, with «60 000 notes on flags and funnels worldwide from all branches of shipping».
    reported by Jan Mertens, 21 Nov 2003
  • Schornsteine, by Christian Biedekarken, pages organized by funnel colour. And a lot of house flags, to be sure.
    reported by Jan Mertens, 25 Nov 2003
  • Part of the National Maritime Museum&700;s flag collection (the house flags)
    reported by Barbara Tomlinson, 03 Aug 2004
  • Site on house flags of french shipping companies, by Dominique Cureau.
    reported by Dominique Cureau, 04 Jun 2004
  • The World Salvage Directory of the International Salvage Union (ISU) lists the member companies and show the houseflag of some of them (on each individual company page, linked from the directory)
    reported by Ivan Sache, 24 Jun 2001
  • The Great Ocean Liners: A trip back to days gone by
    reported by Henrik Ljungström, webmaster, 12 Dec 2000
  • major list of Merchant ships
    reported by James Dignan, 12 Dec 2000
  • Reedereien (Ship Companies)

Shipping Companies by country


Funnels vs. house flags

Among the shipping lines covered in the 1934 flag article in National Geographic magazine [gsh34],

  • some had funnel markings which very close resembled their house flags,
  • some had funnel markings which had only a general similarity to their house flags and
  • some had funnel markings which had nothing in common with their house flags.
Edward Smith, 19 Oct 1999


Ratios of house flags

I have several charts and books with houseflags with dimensions varying from 1:2 to 4:5, but it is safe to assume that most (unless otherwise specified) are 2:3.
Jarig Bakker, 07 Oct 2003