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House Flags of Brazilian Shipping Companies, C (part 2)

Last modified: 2009-05-24 by ian macdonald
Keywords: costeira | coutinho |
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Companhia Commércio e Navegação

House Flag of Cia Commércio e Navegação (Brazil) image 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


CONAN - Companhia de Navegação do Norte

House Flag of CONAN - Companhia de Navegação do Norte (Brazil) image by Jarig Bakker, 20 February 2006

Companhia de Navegação do Norte (CONAN), Rio de Janeiro - horizontal green-white-green flag; in center "C" consisting of one orange and two blue parts.
Source: Loughran (1979)
Jarig Bakker, 20 February 2006


Companhia Nacional de Navegação Costeira (Rio de Janeiro)

House Flag of Cia. Nac. de Nav. Costeira 
(Brazil) image 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)

House Flag of A. Coutinho e Cia (Brazil) image 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


Cruzeiro do Sul

House Flag of Cruzeiro do Sul (Brazil) image by Klaus-Michael Schneider, 17 April 2009

The company was located in Santos. The flag is quarterly divided into red and white. In the red upper hoist quarter are five white 5-point stars ordered regularly 2 above 1 above 2. It is not a Southern Cross.
Source:
Arnold KLUDAS: Die Geschichte der deutschen Passagierschiffahrt (5 Bde.) Hamburg 1986; Reprint Laibach Slovenia-Buch Nr. 03617-8 Flagchart p.223
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 17 April 2009