States Steamship Company, also called States Line and SSS, was started in 1928 by Charles Dant, in Portland, Oregon and later moved to the headquarters to San Francisco. Dant started the States Steamship Company to take his lumber product to market. He had a fleet of lumber schooners. Dant started by leasing ships from the United States Shipping Board - Emergency Fleet Corporation and founded the Columbia Pacific Steamship Company in 1919, Columbia Pacific Steamship Company routes were between Portland, Far East and Europe. In 1928 Dant merged the Columbia Pacific Steamship Company into the States Steamship Company. The Europe route ended in 1932 and the ship moved to a Philippines route. With the shift to container shipping in the 1960s and Dant's fleet of ships becoming older and obsolete, the company into bankruptcy in 1979. States Line operated four subsidies: Pacific-Atlantic Steamship Company, California Eastern Line founded in 1937 for lumber shipping, Oregon Oriental Line and the Quaker Line.[1][2]
Charles Dant was a major stock holder in the China Import and Export Lumber Company, which had a large sawmill plant in Shanghai.
In 1928 Charles Dant pick the swastika (at that time symbol of good luck until the 1930s) for this ship's flags. The red flag had a black upright swastika on it. After Adolf Hitler picked the swastika for the Nazi Party flag in 1937, Dant was forced to change his flag to avoid associations with a state hostile to the United States. The first flag was blue and white with a red vertical stripe at the pole and was used until the 1950s. The swastikas painted on the funnels have been replaced by a white sun cross on a blue background. In the 1950s, the logo and flag was changed to a red seahorse between the waves. New logo was ordered in Walter Landor Associate and served until the end of the company's existence.[3]
1928-1940s
1940s-1950s and longer in subsidiaries
1940s-1950s and longer in subsidiaries (variant)
1950s-1979
1950s-1979 (variant)
States Steamship Company ships
SS Otsego chartered to the States Steamship Company in 1941Empire State VI was built for the States Steamship Company in 1961
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