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TAK Shipping Co, New York
I have no information at all on this company. Its flag was blue with a white
cipher resembling a reversed P joined to a K.
Source:
US Navy's 1961 H.O.
Joe McMillan, 25 November 2001
Tak Shipping Co. I presume this is the Tak Shipping Corporation shown in the 1950s with the logo suggesting an association with Pack & Kahn Inc. and with Brown 1982 showing a red flag with white logo in the latter name although having the "P" rounded.
Neale Rosanoski, 12 April 2004
Tampa Interocean Steamship Co., New Orleans and Tampa
(1920s-30s)
Tampa Interocean was one of the many small companies founded in the years
following World War I using surplus vessels provided by the U.S. Shipping Board.
It evidently specialized in trade between the U.S. Gulf coast and the Caribbean
and South America--Lykes Brothers traditional turf--and was apparently driven
out of business along with other challengers by cutthroat competition from Lykes.
The flag was a white burgee with a red stripe along the upper edge, a blue one
along the bottom, and the letters GWML in blue on the white area. I have no idea
what these letters stood for.
Source: Talbot-Booth (1937)
Joe McMillan, 26 November 2001
Tampa Interocean Steamship Co. According to Talbot-Booth (Merchant Ships series) the letters stood for "Gulf West Mediterranean Line" which presumably was the service name. He also states that the company was controlled by Lykes so they were not in competition and their disappearance was probably due to rationalization.
Neale Rosanoski, 12 April 2004
W. and J. T. Tapscott, New York (1840s-1850s)
The following description of the Tapscott firm is from
www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/tapscott.html:
William Tapscott was an "American Packet ship" broker, who kept offices on
Regent's road, Liverpool, and Eden Quay, Dublin. He worked in conjunction with
his brother James, who was New York-based and specialized in selling prepaid
passages to established immigrants who now wished to bring over loved ones.
Details of their activities are published at the
The Ships List.
The Tapscott brothers' flag resembled that of
Grinnell & Minturn. It was a white and blue burgee divided by a line following the cut of
the tail, with the letters TL in blue in the hoist. Since G&M's Blue Swallowtail
Line was one of the leading companies running ships between New York and
Liverpool, the resemblance may indicate an affiliation between the two
companies.
Source: chart of "Private Signals of the Merchants of New York"
Joe McMillan, 26 November 2001
Moses Taylor, New York (mid-19th century)
Moses Taylor (1806-1882) was one of the giants of the New York business world in
the 19th century and, adjusting for inflation, one of the richest men ever. He
began as a clerk in what would become the great trading firm of
Howland & Aspinwall, then left to form his own company that would eventually grow into
today's Citibank. He had interests in iron, coal, and railroads as well as
shipping. His most important maritime venture was as a leading partner in Cyrus
Field's New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, formed in 1854-55,
and in the successor firm, the Atlantic Cable Company, that finally succeeded in
laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866. Taylor's house flag was
white with a black T flanked by two red Greek crosses.
Source: chart of "Private Signals of the Merchants of New York"
Joe McMillan, 26 November 2001
Taylor and Hitch, New York (mid-19th century)
I don't know if this firm had any connection to Moses Taylor, nor do I have
anything else about it. The flag was a burgee divided white over blue, with the
letters J.A. in blue in the upper half and W in white in the lower.
Source: chart of "Private Signals of the Merchants of New York"
Joe McMillan, 26 November 2001
Taylor and Merrill's Black Star Line
I previously reported this company simply as the
Black Star Line, believing it
might be the same as the more well-known Black Star Line of Williams and Guion.
I believe I mentioned that this connection was incorrect, but don't believe I
provided the correct background on it. It belonged to Robert L. Taylor and
Nathaniel W. Merrill and served the busy New York-Liverpool route in the late
19th century. The flag was a red swallowtail with a black star.
Sources: Manning (1874) and Palmer's List of
Merchant Vessels at
www.geocities.com/mppraetorius/
Joe McMillan, 26 November 2001
Terminal Steamship Co., Bridgeport, CT (1920s-1960s)
Terminal Steamship was still another of the firms founded with surplus vessels
after World War I. Unlike most of the others, it seems to have survived at least
into the 1960s, but I know nothing of what became of it after that. The flag
looked rather like that of Lebanon, or maybe a cross between Canada and New
England: red with a green pine tree on a white Canadian pale.
Source:
US Navy's 1961 H.O.
Joe McMillan, 26 November 2001
Texas City Refining Co., Texas City, Tex. (1908-?)
Texas City is located near Galveston. The refinery company was chartered in
1908, shortly after the discovery of commercial quantities of oil at the
Spindletop well. The refinery handled crude from central Texas and inland and
used its small fleet of tankers to export its products. I don't know if it is
still in operation or whether the company still exists as a separate entity. The
flag was green with the company logo in yellow, a rectangular frame with
engrailed corners surrounding a yellow diagonal bar with the initials TCR in
green.
Sources:
US Navy's 1961 H.O.,
Stewart & Styring (1963)
Joe McMillan, 28 November 2001
Texaco, Inc., New York (1897-2001)
Texaco, formerly the Texas Company, needs little explanation. Founded in 1897 as
the Texas Fuel Company, it grew over the years into one of the world's great
energy enterprises. Texaco's separate existence ended on 9 October 2001, when it
merged with
Chevron, Inc. (once
Standard Oil of California) to become Chevron-Texaco. It had previously been closely associated with
Chevron in several joint
ventures outside the United States, most notably Caltex and the Arabian-American
Oil Company. Texaco's tanker fleet was once one of the largest under the U.S.
flag. While it is still large, Lloyd's Register for 2001 shows only two vessels
left under U.S. registry.
(Note: As with many other companies, the New York
location shown above was not the site of the company's headquarters but the port
at which its ships were registered.
Sources: Lloyds 1912, Wedge (1926), Talbot-Booth (1937)
- was presumably
the company's first flag, divided horizontally green over white with a large red
T on the center.
Sources:
National Geographic (1934),
US Navy's 1961 H.O. and
www.texaco.com showed the
familiar Texaco emblem of the red star with green T on a white disk, in the case
of the flag on a green field. This emblem was first registered as a Texaco
trademark in 1906. Texaco later used a white flag with a red hexagonal frame
surrounding the star-and-T and the name of the company in black. More recently
the trademark has been a red disk with a white star bearing a red T, all on a
black background, but I don't know if this was used on a flag
Joe McMillan, 28 November 2001
Texaco Inc. The last mentioned logo was placed on a white flag according to Brown 1995.
Neale Rosanoski, 12 April 2004
One of the Lykes companies operated services in the name of Texas Star Line.
Neale Rosanoski, 23 November 2003
image provided by Gerard E. Thornton, 25 December 2007
We are a small tug company that operates in New York Harbor, and we have
attached our company flag. We are Marine Steel Transport Line, LLC, soon to be
renamed Thornton Towing & Transportation LLC.
Gerard E. Thornton, 25
December 2007
Tidewater Associated Oil Company, New York
I don't have much on the early history of this company. Tidewater was an East
Coast company and Associated a west coast company. The two merged in 1937. The
combined company was bought by J. Paul Getty in 1953, but maintained a separate
identity into the 1960s.
Source: www.steamship.net (no longer available) was the pre-merger flag of
Tidewater Oil, blue with a red triangle, its base along the hoist and its apex
at the center of the fly.
Sources:
US Navy's 1961 H.O.,
Stewart & Styring (1963) was the flag of Tidewater Associated.
It was white with a flying A in red and green upper and lower edges. The flying
A logo came from Associated Oil. According to E. C. Talbot Booth, Merchant Ships
1949-1950, a version of this flag without the upper and lower stripes was
adopted in 1946. I have also seen depictions of this flag with the stripes in
black.
Joe McMillan, 28 November 2001
Tidewater Associated Oil Co. The name variances, particularly whether
Tidewater is one or two words, match the flag variances and I can only
conjecture. The blue flag with red triangle is given as the pre 1937 merger flag
of Tidewater Oil. Talbot-Booth gives the merger as being between Associated Oil
Co. and Tidewater Associated Transport Corporation so the latter could be a
subsidiary of Tidewater Oil Co. assuming that this existed (?), the new company
being Tide Water Associated Oil Co. as shown by
Talbot-Booth from 1942 and also Lloyds Register of 1937-8. According to Loughran (1979)
in Marine News of 2/1971 he had traced a flag being black with an orange
triangle but only confirmed as far back as 1939. Brown 1943 shows a black flag
but has the triangle red but this can be ascribed to printing restrictions and
the 1951 edition shows an orange shade. Brown shows under Tide Water Oil Co. and Loughran (1979)
as Tidewater Oil Co. Inc. The flying "A" version which apparently was the
gas logo is given by Talbot-Booth 1949 as
originating in 1946 and the version shown by him of the red logo on a plain
white flag could result from incomplete information. Funnels often include bands
which equate to the houseflag and their funnel was black with a white band
bearing the red logo so this band might have been assumed to be the flag.
Similarly, the original edition of
Stewart (1953) and its reprints which show the green flag bands as black may
have resulted from knowledge that the flag was a triband and a dark green, which
I assume it was, being taken to be black in line with the funnel. Loughran (1979)
states that there were alterations to the design of the logo in the mid 1950s
which could account for certain differences between sources. As to the company
name, Lloyds continued to show it as Tide Water Associated Oil Co. up until
around the late 1950s when it appears as Tidewater Oil Co. so possibly there was
an official change.
Neale Rosanoski, 12 April 2004
Tidewater Marine Service Inc., New Orleans, LA - white swallowtail bordered
blue; red "T" shaped like an anchor, shaded blue.
Source:
Loughran (1995)
Jarig Bakker, 22 October 2005
image from Bill Johnston, 15 March 2005
This cap badge of a red tapered swallowtail with the white letters "TMT"
could relate to TMT Trailer Ferry Inc. which was set up in 1954 for freight
transportation from Florida to Puerto Rico, but also ran a passenger ferry from
Key West to Cuba. They went under Chapter 10 in 1957 for reorganization and seem
to have continued into the 1960s.
Neale Rosanoski, 3 January 2010
Tomlinson Fleet (Continental Steamship Co.), Duluth (later Cleveland)
(1901-?)
The Tomlinson Fleet was a fairly substantial Great Lakes line founded by George
Ashley Tomlinson of Duluth, Minnesota (1869-1942). It was one of a number of his
shipping and railroad ventures. At its peak, Tomlinson operated 18 ships.
An early flag used by G. A. Tomlinson was a pennant divided diagonally blue over yellow.
Source: 1909 update to Flaggenbuch 1905
Later, the Tomlinson Fleet flew a red
pennant bordered in blue with blue lines forming a horizontal Y dividing the
pennant into three sections, and with a white T in the fly.
Source:
Stewart (1953)
Joe McMillan, 29 November 2001
Enoch Train & Co., Boston (1844-?)
Enoch Train lived from 1801-68. In 1844, he formed a Boston-Liverpool sail
packet line, known from its house flag (a white lozenge throughout a red field)
as the White Diamond Line. This was the most prominent of the Boston
trans-Atlantic lines. Many Boston Irish can trace their ancestry to immigrants
who came to America on White Diamond ships. Within two years of its founding,
Train & Co had 24 ships in service. Besides Liverpool, it also ran vessels
to the Baltic and South America.
Source: paintings in Peabody-Essex Museum reprinted in Greyhounds of the Sea
Joe McMillan, 29 November 2001
On The Lore of Ships, page 136, A: House flag from Sailing ship days 4 "Enoch
Train White Diamond Line, Boston (1820's)"
I'd say The Lore of the Ships is
wrong about the date: The first ship of this line, I think, was the Joshua
Bates, which was launched in 1844. That's indeed the year we give.
The
books draws the diamond smaller than we have it, with its dimensions
approximately a third of those of the flag. Jeff Eldredge pictured the house
flag on the Washington
Irving, with a somewhat in between size, but I don't know how trustworthy he
is. Note also the large capital T as a sail mark. Then again, though several
paintings exist that show the loss of the Ocean Monarch of the White Diamond
Line, I can't make out the white diamond on red on any of them (warning, these
images about disaster at sea; they are not pleasant images):
- Samuel Walters
(at Wikimedia Commons):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ocean_Monarch_1848_byWalters.png
- Again:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ocean_Monarch.jpg
- Henry
Seaforth (at Christie's):
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4330742
- Henry Melling (at Blue World web museum:
http://blueworldwebmuseum.org/item.php?id=181&catid=80&category=Three-masted_Vessels&artist_id=104
At least, Melling shows the T sail mark; that appears to be authentic.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 15 March 2012
Transoceanic Cable Ship Co., New York - blue flag, white disk, blue
intertwined "TCS".
Source:
Loughran (1995)
Jarig Bakker, 22 October 2005
Trinidad Corp., New York
This was an tanker company, a subsidiary of Barber Oil Corporation, that carried
crude oil and petroleum products worldwide. As of 1949, it had 12 ships with a
total of 130,000 gross tons. It was still in business as of 1984. The flag was a
black-yellow-black horizontal triband.
Sources:
Stewart (1953),
US Navy's 1961 H.O.
Joe McMillan, 29 November 2001
image by Jarig Bakker, 21 February 2006
Tropical Shipping Co., Ltd., Riviera Beach, FL - white tapering swallowtail, a
blue standing anchor over orange "s.Tc."
Source:
Loughran (1995)
Jarig Bakker, 21 February 2006
Tugz International L.L.Co. is part of the Great Lakes Group. The flag
is white charged with a red circle and white Z.
Source:
www.thegreatlakesgroup.com/tugz.htm
Dov Gutterman, 11 October 2003
US shipping lines house flags - 'U' continued