House flags of shipping companies

Last modified: 2020-05-04 by rob raeside
Keywords: house flag | shipping company | funnel |
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• Shipping Companies by country
• Shipping Companies by name:
  A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y | Z
• Flying house flags
• Funnels vs. house flags
• Ratios of house flags

See also:

• Merchant fleets
• International Maritime Organization
• Organization of the Islamic Shipowners Association
• Flags of convenience
• Courtesy flags
• Maritime lifesaving flags
• Fictional shipping house flags
• Yachting flags
• Messaging signal flags
  • Shipping messaging signal flags
• FOTW Vexillological reference
• FOTW Topical Index

External links:

• Houseflags of the World Identifier, by Dominique Cureau with images from FotW-ws and FotW-ml.
• Flaggen und Schornsteinmarken, Michael Harms’ website about worldwide house flags.
• The Mystic Seaport Foundation in Mystic, Connecticut, has digitized a number of old maritime documents and references, including:
  • Lloyd’s House Flags and Funnels, 1911 [llo12]
  • American Yacht List (with burgees):
    • 1874 [u9s74a]
    • 1885 [u9s85a]
    • 1891 [u9s91]
  • Directory of Private Signals Flown by American Merchant Sail [cth02]
  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. It includes also a page with unidentified house flags.
  reported by Ivan Sache, 23 Aug 2002 and 14 Sep 2005
• Rederij Vlaggen @ Binnenvaartforum, a Dutch mailing list, Kustvaartforum (coastal shipping forum) and related sites, 16 Jan. 2005.
  reported by Jan Mertens, 09 Dec 2006
• 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
• Part of the National Maritime Museum’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 house flag of some of them (on each individual company page, linked from the directory)
  reported by Ivan Sache, 24 Jun 2001
• Shipping Industry Guidelines for Flag State Performance
  reported by Ron Lahav, 09 Nov 2008
• 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

Not all countries are linked below — links are made only to those countries where we have found shipping lines’ flags.

Flying house flags

Who has the right to fly a house flag onboard a commercial vessel? Would it be the Owners/Operators or their ship management company?
Lauren Lavercombe, 30 Aug 2007

The operator offers to the cargo-owners the service of transportation by ship. The ship management company offers to the operator the service of moving the ship around. I’d say the company flag should be the flag of the company registering the ship. If the ship is sailing under the flag of Pentecost Island, then an owner or operator has registered the ship in the Pentecost Island register, and their flag should fly from the vessel. Since the ship management company wouldn’t be the one registering the ship, they wouldn’t be the ones flying the company flag either
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 30 Aug 2007

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.

Ratios of house flags

I have several charts and books with house flags 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