File:House flag, George Thompson and Co. Ltd RMG F2793.tiff

The house flag of George Thompson and Co. Ltd, London. A rectangular flag divided into red over blue with a six pointed white star in the centre. The flag is made of a wool bunting. It has a linen hoist and is machine sewn. A rope and toggle are attached.

The company was established in 1825 by George Thompson of Aberdeen in the coasting trade. In 1827 he took shares in a vessel sailing between Scotland and Canada. She carried passengers to Canada and returned with timber. By the late 1840, he was operating 12 ships, trading to places such as South America, the Mediterranean, and the South Pacific. In 1843 the company began regular sailings from London to Australia. From 1856 the firm traded as the Aberdeen Line. The Aberdeen Line’s most famous sailing ship, the ‘Thermopylae’ was launched in 1868.The ship subsequently set many new records for speed in its voyages to and from Australia and the Far East.

In 1882, the Line commissioned its first steamship, the S.S.’Aberdeen’. This vessel embodied the first successful application of triple expansion steam propulsion, the significance of which was to economically open the long haul cargo routes to steam, hitherto the preserve of sail. The principle of triple expansion was well known, but its successful use had been thwarted by the lack of technology to safely generate the higher pressure steam necessary for the application. The ‘Aberdeens’s’ boilers incorporated Fox’s patent corrugated flues, which facilitated the safe generation of higher pressure steam. The Line progressively replaced its sailing vessels with steamships from the early 1880’s.

In 1905 the company came under the joint control of the White Star Line and Shaw, Savill, and Albion. In 1928 the Aberdeen and Commonwealth Line was formed to re-brand the Australian Commonwealth Line, acquired by White Star from the Commonwealth government. Following the collapse in 1932 of Kylsant’s Royal Mail Group, of which White Star was an element, the Aberdeen and Commonwealth Line, was jointly purchased by Furness Withy and the P & O, with Shaw Savill as managers. The Aberdeen Line (now owned by Shaw Savill) ceased trading under its own name after 1938.

During World War II, the Aberdeen and Commonwealth Line’s ship ‘Jervis Bay’ was converted into an Armed Merchant Cruiser and made military history when escorting a convoy of merchant ships in the Atlantic Ocean. The convoy it was defending was attacked by the German Heavy Cruiser ‘Admiral Scheer’ and in the ensuing action, the captain of ‘Jervis Bay’, Captain E.S. Fogarty-Fegan RN, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the fighting of his command against vastly superior odds, which enabled many ships in the convoy to escape.

P & O sold its shares in the Aberdeen and Commonwealth Line to Furness in 1951, and the company continued to operate as a distinct element of Shaw Savill’s Australian service until the last ship was scrapped in 1957. The ‘Bay’ boat names and Aberdeen hull colours were perpetuated in the early OCL ships.