House flag
A house flag or an office flag is originally understood to be the flag of shipping companies and (mainly) international trading houses. The term “house flag” is now also used for flags of companies without a maritime background.
Traditional use
The office flag is carried on board ships in addition to the other international flags such as nationality, host country and signal flags and placed in the port or in the roadstead . Shipping companies still hoisted their office flags on their company headquarters. The offices of larger merchant houses used to be called Kontore .
history
The use of a separate flag for different trading companies has its origins in England . As early as 1581, Queen Elizabeth I approved the Levant Company's own flag,
- " To set and place in the tops of their ships and other vessels the arms of England with the red cross over the same, as heretofore they have used the red cross. "
Other known early house flags were the flag ( "Guinea Jack" ) of the Royal African Company , attested since 1644, and that of the Honorable East India Company .
From around 1820 it became customary for merchant ships to use their own shipping company flag in addition to the respective merchant flag and the home pennant. The office flag was mostly placed on the starboard side of the aft spreader or the yard above it or occasionally even hoisted up to the top of the mast on a special flagstick. The design with the shipping company-typical colored elements and letters was and is free for the office and served both to recognize the ships (since the sailors, unlike modern ships, had no chimney marks for this purpose ) and for general representation.
Many of the first office flags made direct reference to the national flag, or adopted graphic elements of the same. For example, B. the British shipping company Shaw Savill & Co. , founded in 1858 and specialized in traffic with New Zealand , the New Zealand flag from 1834 to 1840.
The flag of the Chinese China Merchant SN Co., on the other hand, was so present and well known in Europe that in many flag registers of the late 19th century this flag was often incorrectly listed as the trade flag of the Chinese Empire .
A first directory specifically on house flags appeared in 1882 with Lloyd's Book of House Flags .
literature
- Ottfried neubecker : banners and flags , L. Staackmann Verlag, Leipzig 1939, p 92 ( office flags )
- Timothy Wilson: Flags at Sea , National Maritime Museum and Chatham Publishing, London 1986, pp. 35ff. ( House flags of shipping companies ), ISBN 1-86176-116-3
- Alfred Znamierowski: Flag Encyclopedia. National flags, banners, standards , Delius Klasing Verlag, Bielefeld 2001, p. 244ff. ( House and private flags ), ISBN 3-7688-1251-0
Web links
- Shipping company flags and ship photos (German / English)
- Flags of the World - House flags of shipping companies (English)
- House Flag of the World Identifier (English / French)
- Directory of House flags with explanations in the National Maritime Museum (English)