Company names and their ships names

[Bryan Portwig]

indeed - but union castle did deviant from naming their vessels after castle in scotland - ie capetown castle named after the fort - rustenburgh after a mining town - bloemfontein after a city durban castle never had a castle - and more

[Peter Harris]

Initially Blue Star did not use the star same as Palm line only added Palm much later, Blue Funnel used Greek names.
Many companies like Royal Mail used the names of companies they absorbed so they had Spanish Rivers, Loch and Highland.
Shaw Savill used used Aborigine names and also some ending in IC as they took over a run from White Star. I have Histories of every Shipping company British and foreign and there were lots of reasons companies adopted naming and many reflected where the owners were from, Hain,s Cornish names, Cities as in Ellermans, Clans Clan Line , Counties as in Bibby and Glen Line.

[Doc Vernon]

Hello Peter
That sounds like a really large collection you have there!
Possibly Post some of the Reasons etc would make interesting reading i feel. However i dont expect you to do the lot! LOL
THAT WOULD TAKE OUR ENTIRE DATABASE UP ! LOL Well may be not quite??
Cheers

[Ken Atkinson]

Hello Peter
That sounds like a really large collection you have there!
Possibly Post some of the Reasons etc would make interesting reading i feel. However i dont expect you to do the lot! LOL
THAT WOULD TAKE OUR ENTIRE DATABASE UP ! LOL Well may be not quite??
Cheers

We have spent 8 pages exploring company themes but are there any companies that used random names?

[J Gowers]

Think I may have mentioned this before but there was a drilling company called SONAT (now part of Transocean) and their rigs were named after guys who were on the board of the company. Unfortunatly one of the board members was called Pratt Rather and this rig worked in the US Gulf but then got a contract in the North Sea and the name was changed to Sonat Rather for obvious reasons.

[Trader]

I sailed with a Dutch company, Wm.H.Muller & Co., but with some ships under the British flag. Most of their ships were named after French rivers, Gironde, Garonne, Seine, Aisne, Somme, Escaut,Scheldt, Meuse etc. I was on the Somme on the Manchester/Liverpool to Rouen/Paris run and a few years later on the Scheldt on the London to Paris trade. Good little jobs carrying general cargo. RoRo ships killed the trade and it finished in 1970. The Scheldt, which I was on, was sold to Metcalfs and became Thomas M.

[Haig Dick]

John, Blue Funnel ship names came from characters in Homer's "The Odyssey".

[John C Bell]

And then there were the Ellerman City, Hall and Bucknall ships, all named after a city such as 'City of Lucknow', 'City of York', 'City of Melbourne' etc. The one thing I could never understand was changing the name of the ship to another city. I was on the 'Melbourne' as a cadet for almost two years in the sixties. Subsequently she became the City of Cape Town. A great shame as I spent many happy hours over the bow in a bosun's chair re-painting the City of Melbourne crest or hoisting the city flag as we entered Melbourne. This beautiful flag was presented to the ship on her maiden voyage.

[happy daze john in oz]

Saw a number of their ships in Cape Town but never the city of such.
Did not know she was once the city where I now live, Melbourne.
But with such a name she must have been good.