Swedish East India Company A cargo tally, printed by William Milburn in 1813, shows the following. The ships used by the Swedish East India Company. According to the first charter, the SOIC's ships were only allowed to use the Swedish merchant flag, a rectangular blue flag with a yellow cross. With the renewal of the charter in 1746, the company was allowed to add its name cypher, or monogram, to the flag in order to distinguish the ships from other trading vessels. Soon after that, the ships of the SOIC started to use a fork-tailed or swallow-tailed flag. The intention was that the ship
Buff (colour) colour "in the range of the Marschall color", meaning the colour in illustrations in a particular book. As a relatively inexpensive and readily-available paint colour, and one which went well alongside the near-universal black hull and white superstructure used on steamships at the time, White Star was far from the only shipping line to use a shade of buff as a funnel colour. The Orient Line and Norddeutscher Lloyd used an entirely buff funnel without the black top, while Canadian Pacific and the Swedish American Line employed a buff funnel with a representation of the company's house flag on them.