![[Archipelago-American house flag]](../images/g/gr~hfaas.gif)
Last modified: 2016-10-29 by ivan sache
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House flag of Archipelago-American Steamship Co. - Image by Ivan Sache, 30 March 2008
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Archipelago-American Steamship Co. was based in Smyrna (Asia Minor, today, Izmir, Turkey).
Quoting The New York Times, 1 May 1912:
A telegram from the Daily News from Constantinople says that at 5 o'clock on Monday afternoon the little steamer Texas, under the American flag but belonging to a local company, left Smyrna for Salonica with 139 passengers and cargo.
When off Yenikale Fort, a short distance from the mouth of the Gulf of Smyrna, the Texas touched a floating mine, which exploded and sank the steamer. [...] Only 70 passengers were saved by the pilot steamer.
[...]
The Texas is a vessel of 480 tons built in 1888, and now owned by the Archipelago-American Steamship Company. She belongs to a fleet of eight steamers, of which seven appear to have been renamed in 1910 and transferred from the Turkish to the American flag. The Texas was formerly known as the Olympia, and belonged to Hadji Daout Farkouh, while G. Farkouh is now given as the name of the Manager of the Archipelago-American Company.[...]
Quoting The New York Times, 14 February 1915:
Advices received here today from Constantinople say that the Turkish government will protest against the sinking by the Russians of the steamship Washington while sailing under the American flag. The vessel is reported to have been sunk on Feb. 8 while engaged in carrying Red Cross supplies between Constantinople and Trebizond.
The Washington was owned by the Archipelago-American Steamship Company, which controls a fleet of boats named after American States and playing between American ports. The steamship Texas, which struck a mine and sank in the Gulf of Smyrna in May 1912, at the time of the Turkish-Italian war, belonged to this line.
The Archipelago-American Steamship Company is owned in large parts by naturalized Greeks, and is chartered under the Maine laws, though no American registry has been granted to its vessels. At the time of an anti-Greek boycott directed against the ships of this company some years ago, however, the line was authorized to fly the American flag by the American Consul at Smyrna because the company was largely controlled by American interests.
Ivan Sache, 30 March 2008
The house flag of Archipelago-American Steamship Co. is shown in Lloyd's book of house flags and funnels of the principal steamship lines of the world and the house flags of various lines of sailing vessels, published at Lloyd's Royal Exchange. London. E.C. (1912) [llo12], also available online thanks to the Mystic Seaport Foundation, #142, p. 43, as white with a blue saltire and a white star in each quarter.
Ivan Sache, 30 March 2008
