Last modified: 2015-01-17 by alex garofolo
Keywords: paraguay | flota mercante del estado | star: 5 points (red on white) | diamond (white) | cpnu | copanu |
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Yet another Nigoco firm was Compañía Paraguaya de Navegación de Ultramar S.A.
(i.e. Paraguayan Overseas Navigation Co., Ltd) established at Asunción. The
following information was found in the 1995 book Van Nievelt, Goudriaan & Co’s
Stoomvaart Maatschappij (Nigoco) by F. Haalmeijer & B. Scholten.
Nigoco started sailing to Paraguay in the nineteen-fifties, using small
coasters, with a view to break
Dodero's quasi-monopoly and to avoid transhipment
in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Meat, cotton, wood and other produce were
transported but negotiating the River Paraguay was difficult and only possible
by daylight.
At the behest of the Paraguayan government a new company was founded in 1960
operating a coaster, painted gray and having a military crew, in a commercial
role! Nigoco chartered this ship for the Flota Mercante del Estado del
Paraguay, linking Paraguay to Antwerp and Hamburg.
Between 1963 and 1988 the Compañía Paraguaya de Navegación de Ultramar S.A. was an operator of Nigoco
ships.
The house flag: basically
horizontally divided red-blue-red, the central blue stripe bears a white stripe
of one third width; on that central stripe rests a white canton bearing a blue
logo composed of the intials CPNU made to resemble an anchor; and
to complicate matters the horizontal blue stripe, still bearing its white
companion, changes into a vertical one at fly end.
This
page lists the Nigoco ships in question:
The company still exists. It is now a fully Paraguayan firm, also named COPANU (C.P.N.U.) engaged in local
maritime traffic linking Paraguayan ports to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay.
Three container ships are operated. In addition there is the local agency for
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
The house flag as shown on this site differs from the one drawn by Martin Heere
on end-papers of Haalmeijer & Scholten,
authors of 1995 book on Nigoco related firms. The red space between the canton and the blue vertical stripe is a
square or, to put it differently, at least the drawings show a difference in
ratio (earlier 1:2 to current 3:5, I believe).
Jan Mertens, 29 Sep and 1 Oct 2008
After Brown’s Flags and Funnels, 1995
[lgr95], Flota Mercante del Estado,
Asuncion — white flag, three thin horizontal lines in the center of
red-blue-red, idem vertical; in center white diamond outlined red,
red 5-pointed star.
Jarig Bakker, 13 Sep 2005
Anything below this line was not added by the editor of this page.
