Boatnerd Discussion Forum

While doing some further research on this subject, I have come across the following notations in the Scanner publication by the Toronto Marine Historical Society from the 1970s that refer to the Hall Corporation using red components in their fleet identification practices. While I cannot find any reference as the identity of the single tanker reported to have received the trial red color at the base of the stack in any of my marine journals from that time period, these two excerpts clearly indicate that the Hall Corporation did experiment with incorporating the color red into their fleet colors during the last half of the 1970s.

Scanner V.9 No. 9 Summer 1977:

"Speaking of the Hall fleet, some of our members may have observed a change in the company's houseflag. The flag still sports the "wishbone" and 'H' but the upper field (above the wishbone) is now black whilst the lower field is a bright red."

Scanner V. 11 No. 5 February 1979:

"The new name GASPE TRANSPORT was painted on the former ARSENE SIMARD during late December upon completion of the transfer to Hall Corporation from Branch Lines Ltd. GASPE TRANSPORT is presently sporting Halco's new stack design; the lower portion of the stack below the wishbone is now a bluish colour instead of the red that had been anticipated and which was tried on one tanker. The new design will appear on all Halco boats during 1979."

Other than the books "The Wishbone Fleet" by Daniel McCormick published in 1972 and the "Hall Corporation Tankers of the Great Lakes" by Skip Gillham published in 2002, I don't believe there has been any other publications detailing the history of this fleet. Even with these two publications, it does not appear that a full history of this fleet's tanker and dry bulk operations currently exists.

If I remember correctly from my sailing days in the 70's, some of the Halco tankers had red on the bottom portion of their stacks. Some of the other Hall boats had blue instead.
It was an interesting diversified fleet and quite large but unfortunately succumbed to the economic reality of the 80's.

While looking at a website today, I caught a glimpse of the stern of a Hall Corporation tanker in photograph dated 1979 that looks to have been taken while the vessel was docked at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. I have attached a small screen capture here. As can be seen the bottom of the stack appears to be painted red. I know that some of the Hall Corporation, or Halco, ships did have multicolor stacks rather than just the dark blue or black with white lettering, with many have a light blue shade of paint at the base below the company's white "wishbone" striping. This one is, however, clearly has a red base which does not appear to be the darker brown color of primer commonly seen when vessels are being repainted. I was wondering if anyone knew as to the reason why such a color scheme was applied to this ship, which appears to be possibly the James Transport or Industrial Transport. I apologize for the low quality of the image but the best I could get from a screen grab.