Last modified: 2016-07-02 by ivan sache
Keywords: prodromos lines | bodossakis |
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![[Flag]](../images/g/gr~hfpro.gif)
![[Flag]](../images/g/gr~hfpr1.gif)
House flag of Prodromos Lines
Left, as shown by Brown; right, as shown by Josef Nuesse - Images by Miles Li, 15 June 2016
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The company, based in Piraeus, was founded by Athanassiadis Prodromos, better known as Bodossakis. The name "Bodossakis" derives from the Turkish equivalent of "Prodromos". He was born at the end of the 19th century in Nigdi (today, Niğde), Asia Minor, in a very poor family. He moved to Adana aged 10, where he started his own business two years later. Aged 17, he was a leader in the economy of Asia Minor, first in Mersin and then in İstanbul.
Bodossakis lost most of his companies during the Greek-Turkish war and
settled to Greece in 1923. Three years later, nearly nothing remained
of his fortune and he started again business fropm scratch. In 1940,
his companies were main suppliers of Greece and its allies with
military equipment.
After the war, his various activities accounted for 35% of Greek
industry, with famous companies such as Greek Powder and Cartridge
Company SA (munitions), Greek Woollen Mills Ltd. (textile), Greek Wines
and Spirits Company (wines), The Hellenic Chemical Products and
Fertilizers Company Ltd., Chemical Industries of Northern Greece
(fertilizers), Hellenic Owens Elefsis Glass Company SA (glassware),
Prodromos Lines Ltd. (shipping), Laiki Insurance Company SA, and,
mostly minerals and mining companies (Kassandra Mines, Ermioni Mines,
Lavrio Mining Company Ltd., Ptolemais Lignite Mines, General Mining and
Metallurgical Company, Mining Company of Greece).
Bodossakis died in 1979 and bequeathed all his fortune to the Bodossaki
Foundation (website); he is considered as one of the greatest benefactors of
Greece and Cyprus via several donations he made from the 1920s to his death.
Ivan Sache, 13 March 2006
According to Brown's Flags and Funnels of Shipping
Companies of the World (1995) [lgr95], the house flag of Prodromos Lines is a white flag with a blue diamond charged with a white "B".
Josef Nuesse's flag collection shows
another house flag, white with two horizontal blue stripes flanking a
blue square diamond charged with a white "B". On both flags, "B" stands
for Bodossakis, the company founder's name.
Jarig Bakker & Ivan Sache, 6 October 2010