[pp1972]

House flag of Adria

The house flag of Adria, as shown in Larousse commercial illustré (1930) [hok30] and in All about ships and shipping (1934) [har34], is blue with a red saltire and overall a yellow anchor, the initial "A" and a five-pointed star at the top.

Željko Heimer, Jan Mertens & Jarig Bakker, 19 October 2004

The 1930 "Larousse Commercial" lists this company as Italian, based as it was in Fiume, but we all know that Fiume is now Rijeka, Croatia.
"Adria" S.A. di Navigazione Marittima has a blue flag with a red saltire (the arms equal to 1/5 of the flag's width), over all a yellow anchor (without rope) which bears a letter A, also yellow: its apex has been flattened to run parallel to, and immediately below, the anchor's stock. Incidentally, the A rests completely within the saltire, you could say it sits astride on it. The anchor itself takes up about 1/3 of the flag's length and almost completely fills up the flag's width. Funnel: black.
See also previous flag below, showing an earlier, pre-WWI version (technically, a Hungarian house flag).
The blue in the 1930 flag could refer to Italy, whereas the central emblem survived in a adapted form. I believe the firm helped to make up a new company to be called Adriatica di Navigazione.

Jan Mertens, 31 October 2003

In "All about Ships and Shipping", 1938 I found about the same image, with minor differences: the legs of the "A" are in blue; the anchor takes 2/3 flagheight, and there's a yellow 5-pointed star in the top.
Caption: "Adria", Soc. Anon. di Nav. Marittima (I sailed by one of their ships from Palermo to Tunis in 1965).

Jarig Bakker, 31 October 2003

I did see a very small yellow speck on the 1930 image... I thought it was due to bad printing...
Jan Mertens, 31 October 2003

My deductions, which are only guesswork, are that it originated as the Austro-Hungarian company shown by Griffin 1895 as Adriatic Hungarian Sea Navigation Co. or Adria-Hungarian Sea Navigation Co., by Lloyds 1904, 1912 and Reed 1912 as Royal Hungarian Sea Navigation Co. "Adria" Ltd., and by Merchant Ships 1942 as the Hungarian company Adria Regia Ungarica which after WWI became the Italian Adria company [i.e. "Adria" Società Anonima di Navigazione Marittima] which merged into Società Anonima di Navigazione "Tirrenia" in 1938.
For the "Previous Flag" four sources show flags differing slightly in each case. Griffin 1895 has the emblem in black outline on the white oval comprising a foul anchor with above it a crown and below a scroll. Lloyds 1904 shows basically the same except it is in red and the crown looks more like a mitre and touches the top of the anchor and there is a suggestion (possibly imagination) that a red "A" surmounts the anchor stock with the scroll shown as red with white print. Lloyds 1912 shows a blue anchor but the crown and scroll look more like printing blots or possibly misprinting of the anchor cable [I am working from an actual edition which I assume is also clearer than the web version], and I presume that fairly enough they have been ignored when producing the previous flag shown as what they actually are only becomes clear when comparing with the other sources. Finally Reed 1912 gives a larger oval touching top and bottom which is basically the same with the red "A" appearing to exist and the scroll being red with black letters. None of the scrolls can be read of course.
Neale Rosanoski, 24 March 2004

The item atop the emblem would be, most probably the St. Stephen's crown (I think it is a safe guess), but I decided to ignore it for the moment, just as I did with the scroll (that would read, no doubt either "ADRIA" or "FIUME"). Anyway, the details for the emblem were of little significance for the books of the kind we use as sources here (they were meant for recognizing purposes and not to be fully faitful), and we would probably need to get hold of a real flag or at least some other material containing the Adrial logo (like the headers of writing paper or the time tables). Anyway, it seems to me that the letter A and the cable was red, while the anchor was blue.
Željko Heimer, 27 March 2004

Zastava i gornji  tekst + rasprave oko zastave poreuzeti sa flagspot.net

[pp1972]

Jos jedna verzija zastave i ciminjera, skinuto sa stranice cherini.eu.

[pp1972]

Timetable for Adria - Fiume, 1936.  Signed Gauss. front i back cover, skinito sa stranice travelbrochuregraphics.com