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House Flags of Brazilian Shipping Companies, A-D

Aliança
Amazon Lines, Ltda.
Cabotagem de Pernambuco, Cia. de
Carneiro
Chaval
CNA
CCN - Companhia Commércio e Navegação
Costeira
Coutinho
Diaz Irmão
DOCENAVE

Empresa de Navegação Aliança S.A. (Rio de Janeiro)

(old version)

by Joseph McMillan

Source: Josef Nuesse's website Reedereiflaggen: House Flags of Shipping Companies.

(1993 Version)

by Joseph McMillan

Source: Josef Nuesse's website Reedereiflaggen: House Flags of Shipping Companies.

(Current Version)

by Joseph McMillan

Horizontal black-white-red with a thin yellow horizontal stripe on the middle of the white. From http://www.alianca.com.br.
Dov Gutterman, 15 January 1999

According to the company website, Companhia Aliança de Navegação was founded in 1951 by a German immigrant named Carl Fischer, who had arrived in Brazil in 1928 and entered the fruit business. Aliança was originally limited to coastal trade, since Lloyd Brasileiro, the government-owned line, had a legal monopoly over the transoceanic traffic. Aliança was allowed to enter the foreign trade in 1967 and now serves Europe, the U.S. east coast, the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, and both coasts of South America. It has 5 vessels totaling 178,000 deadweight tons, employs 283 people, and had revenues of US $180,000,000 in 1999. I would speculate that Fischer's German origins would account for the black-white-red horizontal tricolor that serves as the field of the house flag.
Joseph McMillan, 26 March 2002

Amazon Lines, Ltda.

by Al Fisher

Flag from www.dgagency.com/Amazon.html (no longer on-line).
Dov Gutterman, 11 February 1999

Companhia de Cabotagem de Pernambuco

by Jorge Candeias

This name translates as the Cabotage (i.e., coastwise shipping) Company of Pernambuco. The flag can be described as dark blue charged in the center by a white panel, in turn charged in the center by a dark red panel and a saltire overall, also dark red. The company initials, CCP, are black and centered on the red panel. Not bad a flag, methinks.
Source: Chart of house flags circa 1950 at www.naufragiosdobrasil.com.br
Jorge Candeias, 3 August 2002

Despite the presence of Pernambuco in the name, actually based in Santos, São Paulo. Operated one ship of 5,000 gross tons, according to Lloyd's Register 1949-50.
Joseph McMillan, 28 October 2002

Carneiro Industrial Ltda (Amazonas)

by Jorge Candeias

Carneiro is a common Portuguese surname (meaning "male sheep"), so it's basically Carneiro's industrial company. The flag is a green and white horizontal triband, with the company initials: C, in white, in upper hoist, I, in green in the center, and L, in white, in the lower fly.
Source: Chart of house flags circa 1950 at www.naufragiosdobrasil.com.br
Jorge Candeias, 30 June 2002

Chaval Navegação

by Joseph McMillan

Source: Josef Nuesse's website Reedereiflaggen: House Flags of Shipping Companies.

Companhia Commércio e Navegação

by Joseph McMillan

From E. C. Talbot-Booth, Merchant Ships 1949-1950 (New York: McGraw Hill and London: Sampson Low, 1949):
Rio de Janeiro - Service to most Brazilian ports plus the United States and Europe. Managed by Pereira Carneiro. Steamship owners since 1907, controlled by Cia Carbonífera Rio Grandense. The flag was blue with a white diagonal stripe, upper hoist to lower fly, inscribed in red letters CCN.
Joseph McMillan, 29 October 2002

CNA (Manaus)

Companhia de Navegação da Amazônia

by Jorge Candeias

Flag from www.grupolibra.com (no longer available).
Dov Gutterman, 20 January 1999

Very dark green, a white lozenge with a red "A" centered.
Jorge Candeias, 4 February 1999

Companhia Nacional de Navegação Costeira (Rio de Janeiro)

by Joseph McMillan

Sources: Brown's Flags and Funnels (1951); Stewart and Styring (1963); U.S. Navy H.O. Pub 100.
This company is apparently defunct.
Joseph McMillan, 29 June 2001

According to E. C. Talbot-Booth, Merchant Ships 1949-1950 (New York: McGraw Hill and London: Sampson Low, 1949), Costeira was founded in 1891. Talbot-Booth shows the flag with a normal cross paty rather than the straight-edged one above. Flaggenbuch 1905 (1909 supplement) shows the cross as four isosceles triangles that don't quite meet in the middle.
Joseph McMillan, 29 October 2002

The Companhia Nacional de Navegação Costeira operated coastal voyages between Rio and northern Brazilian ports (e.g., Natal, Fortaleza, Recife, Salvador). The ships were apparently quite luxurious, at least in first class, described in one account I found as um grande playground, with voyages considered a vacation in themselves. The line was nicknamed "Itas do Norte" from the names of the ships, all of which began with the prefix "Ita-." Supposedly the original owner was a man named Laje, which is a Portuguese word for "stone" [actually "flagstone"] and ita means "stone" in Tupi. Readers of Jorge Amado's novel Gabriela, cravo e canela (Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon) may recall that it was an Ita ship that carried the protagonist, Mundinho Falcão, back and forth from Rio to Ilhéus, the grounding of which provoked the dredging of the port that was an important part of the background of the story. Costeira was nationalized at some point before 1942, then merged in 1966 with the government-owned Lloyd Brasileiro to form "Companhia de Navegação Lloyd Brasileiro e da Empresa de Reparos Nacional 'Costeira', S.A." In other words, Costeira apparently became the ship repair arm of Lloydbras. Lloydbras itself was abolished in 1998.
Joseph McMillan, 28 October 2002

And do Norte (meaning "northern") in the nickname Itas do Norte because the harbors served were northern Brazilian cities. Adding to the trivia, a well-known Brazilian traditional tune goes:

Peguei um Ita do Norte
e vim p'ró Rio morar:
Adeus, meu pai, minha mãe,
adeus, Belém do Pará!

(Morar and Pará do rhyme in most Portuguese-Brazilian dialects.)
This means "I boarded an Ita do Norte and came to settle in Rio: Farewell, my father, my mother; farewell, Belém of Pará." The latter is Belém city, capital of Pará, a Brazilian state. Belém, a common toponym in Portuguese speaking areas, is Portuguese for Bethlehem. Former Brazilian president Itamar Franco was named after one of these ships, for having being born aboard one of them--or so the legend goes.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 28 October 2002

Henrique Lage (not Laje, but still a pun because of the same sound) was one serious industrial magnate--shipbuilding, salt refining, first aircraft factory in Brazil, port and river navigation development, mining, benefactor of the military academy, close friend of President Getúlio Vargas (dictator of Brazil beginning in 1930), you name it. And founder of the Costeira Line. His estate is now the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens, otherwise known as Parque Lage.
Joseph McMillan, 29 October 2002

Empresa de A. Coutinho e Cia (Pará)

by Jorge Candeias

The flag shows 7 white and red horizontal stripes with a blue "C" in a white canton. The C stands almost certainly for Coutinho, a relatively common Portuguese surname.
Source: Chart of house flags circa 1950 at www.naufragiosdobrasil.com.br
Jorge Candeias, 4 June 2002

Listed in Lloyd's Register 1949-50 as operating three vessels totaling about 900 tons.
Joseph McMillan, 28 October 2002

Diaz Irmão e Cia. (Espírito Santo)

by Jorge Candeias

Diaz Irmão can be a name, but it's more likely that it means "Diaz and Brother," so this company's name can probably be translated as "Diaz, Brother and Co." Diaz is a Spanish name, by the way. The flag is blue over white with large countercharged initials "SCN" in the centre. Funny thing, these letters bear no resemblance to the company name.
Source: Chart of house flags circa 1950 at www.naufragiosdobrasil.com.br
Jorge Candeias, 5 June 2002

DOCENAVE

Vale do Rio Doce Navegação S.A. (Rio de Janeiro)

by Joseph McMillan

Source: Josef Nuesse's website Reedereiflaggen: House Flags of Shipping Companies.

According to the DOCENAVE and Vale do Rio Doce company websites, DOCENAVE, or Navegação Vale do Rio Doce, S.A., was formed in 1962 and is the shipping arm of the Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), a huge, formerly state-owned company (privatized in 1998) with mining, industrial, forest product, transport and port operations interests in Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Pará, and Maranhão states. CVRD itself was created in 1942 to implement the Brazilian government's takeover, under a U.S.-UK- Brazilian agreement, of American and British iron mining and railroad interests in Minas Gerais as part of the Allied war effort. DOCENAVE claims to be one of the 10 largest transoceanic shipping companies in the world. Most of its operations are conducted through a Liberian- flagged subsidiary, SeaMar. Including both foreign and domestic services, DOCENAVE and its subsidiaries operate about 24 ocean-going vessels (plus eight tugs), 10 of them under the Brazilian flag. Routes connect Brazil to the U.S. east and west coasts, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Far East, carrying primarily ferrous and non-ferrous ores, oil, and grain.
Joseph McMillan, 26 March 2002