35018 – silverfox175

Even though Calcutta is a 170 km (100 miles) from the sea the river Hooghly is large and deep enough for deep sea ships to sail to Calcutta to load and discharge.

The Company that I worked for began life in Calcutta in 1856 so it was not a surprise to see other BISNC (British India Steam Nav Co) vessels working cargo and waiting for the schedule time to go alongside to processing passengers as Chakdara approached lock gates of our berth. The white vessel in the above photo is a BISNC a passenger ship.

The distinctive black funnel with two white bands has had connections with Calcutta for over a hundred years.
Until 1911 Calcutta was the capital of India and an extremally import city and ‘the’ place in which to do business.

The founders of the Company were two Scottish partners William Mackinnon and Robert Mackenzie and according to legend they wanted a house flag for their new company.
Being Scottish they wanted a blue Scottish flag, but to differentiate it from the national flag of Scotland they wanted a triangle cut from the fly. An outline of the new flag was drawn for the flag maker.

Instead of using the Scottish flag as his guide the flag maker used a St Patrick of Ireland flag as a guide

and produced a white flag with the triangle cut from the wrong flag. The partners were not happy, but being penny wise they kept the incorrect flag which over time became famous from London to Shanghai as the BISNC flag.

 

Remember cigarette cards and how children would collect them . .

perhaps when the children grew a little older, they took advantage of sailing in the school ship Dunera. The above badge would have been given to each child that sailed in Dunera.

Dunera was originally a troopship but when trooping by sea ceased, she was converted back to being a school ship, at which she was very popular with students. 

The British India Company grew to become one of the largest shipping companies in the world.In the 1940’s the rail network of the UK was controlled by four major companies. One of the Big Four was the Southern Railway and they decided to create a Merchant Navy Class of steam locomotives.

In 1945 locomotive 35018   was completed and was named British India Line.