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House Flags of U.S. Shipping Companies: F

Fall River Line
Fargo Shipping Corp.
S. C. Farnham & Co.
Farrell Lines
Foreign Tankship Corp.
A. Foster & Sons Rio de Janeiro Line
Joseph Foulke & Sons
Fox & Livingston Union Line
Funch & Meinke

Fall River Line

The ‘Fall River Line’ is a shipping company mentioned on the ‘Steamship China Patterns’ page (‘Cabin Class Collectibles’ site) but not presented there.

Three house flag variants can be seen in the following files: us~flr1.jpg, us~frl2.jpg and us~frl3.jpg but this order is not chronological.

Jan Mertens, 31 August 2005

Fargo Shipping Corp.

image by Joe McMillan

Fargo Shipping Corp., New York
Red with a white "F."
Source: Styring (1971)

Joe McMillan, 8 October 2001

S. C. Farnham & Co.

image by Joe McMillan

S. C. Farnham & Co.
Blue with a white disk.
Source: Flaggenbuch (1905)

Joe McMillan, 8 October 2001

Farrell Lines

image by Joe McMillan

Farrell Lines is a privately held steamship corporation controlled by the Farrell family, which owns, charters and operates vessels of the United States registry in the ocean borne foreign commerce of the United States.

Formed in 1925, the company, then known as American South African Line, began serving South Africa from Eastern U.S. ports in January of 1926, and continued to operate in that trade until August of 1980. In 1947, upon the commencement of regularly scheduled liner service to West Africa from the U.S. east coast, the name of the company was changed to Farrell Lines Incorporated. Farrell Lines expanded its trade range to Australia-New Zealand from the U.S. east Coast in 1965 and from the U.S. west coast in 1975. These two services were terminated in 1983 and 1982, respectively.

In March of 1978, Farrell Lines purchased American Export Lines, which was then serving the Far East, South Asia, North Europe and the Mediterranean from U.S. North Atlantic ports.

Farrell Lines currently operates five fully containerized vessels in the U.S./Mediterranean trade. These include three new E-Class vessels acquired by the Company in November and December 1997. Farrell's share of the commercial market in the Mediterranean trade is substantial.

Source: www.farrell-lines.com/history.html

Phil Nelson, 27 August 2001

Farrell Lines (1922-2000), New York
Farrell Lines was founded as the American-South African Line by James Farrell and was the leading US-flag company serving Africa. It expanded into US-Australia routes in the 1970s. It briefly became the second largest US merchant line by buying American Export Line's equipment when AEL went bankrupt in 1978, but went heavily into debt doing so. Farrell was forced to retrench throughout 1980s and 1990s. By 1991, the entire line consisted of only four ships serving the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf and the remaining operation was sold to the mega-line P&O Nedlloyd in 2000. The Farrell flag, one of the more distinctive designs, was a white saltire dividing the field into alternate red and blue quarters.
(Sources: National Geographic (1934), Stewart (1953), US Navy's 1961 H.O. and www.farrell.com (no longer on line the last time I checked)