CENTREPORT LTD.

The Harbour Board flag is blue with a white circle containing simplified arms: a dark-brown anchor with two vertical blue stripes near each end of the crossbar, a blue cod between two yellow stars, and a four-pointed yellow embattled crown with white mortar lines and a red base. Below is a blue scroll with white FIRME DUM FIDE. These colours and details were checked against an actual museum flag. The company described the fish as a cod, despite published descriptions calling it a dolphin. The funnel carried the crest without the flag’s added scroll.

The Board’s floating plant used the ensign, omitting the motto scroll. The Kupe model in Wellington Maritime Museum supplied the funnel version, with much of the crest bronze and the two stars blue. Rosanoski nevertheless favours W284’s colours, supported by contemporary descriptions of the actual crests.

The Harbour Board funnel continued after 1988. By 1992 Kupe had a silver-grey funnel, black top and broad charcoal-grey band carrying a movable disc and the new Port of Wellington emblem. Intended lettering was omitted because it proved physically impracticable. The emblem represented New Zealand with Wellington as the trade hub: blue except for the gold upper North Island portion. The disc covered a ventilation opening and could be moved for access. The original blue emblem clashed with the red hull and superstructure, prompting experiments.

W287, sometimes depicted as white, was actually silver in a Kupe photograph of 18 March 1993. The emblem, described as clock hands, remained on a movable disc that blended into the funnel colour.

In November 1993 Kupe retained the silver-grey funnel but gained a white-and-red biband below the black top. Toia still had a buff funnel with black top.

By 20 August 1994 Kupe’s disc had been removed: closing the fire flaps with it in place took too long.

The discs were intended to be modified after work on Toia, but the scheme had not proceeded by 2005. Both tugs reverted to cream-and-black funnels, documented on Toia in March 1993 and March 1998 and Kupe in July 1997. A possible grey top on Kupe in May 1998 apparently proved to be undercoat for black repainting.

The Port of Wellington flag was white, with the geographic logo entirely blue rather than blue and gold. W290 was the 1:2 building flag. W431 was a 3:4 storm flag for manned tugs and the pilot launch in daylight, its shorter form reducing flogging and fly droop. Its adoption date is unspecified. The company’s November 1994 letter shows all-capital lettering, but its logo and observed flags mix upper and lower case; Rosanoski regards the letter’s illustrations as erroneous.

W291 shortens the words to Port Wellington and is recorded as 2:3. The source’s photograph descriptions are inconsistent: the September 1995 flag is described both as the shorter version and as W290, while the October 1996 view is called the long version, perhaps old stock, and elsewhere cited for W291. The sequence therefore remains qualified.

The CentrePort identity announced on 28 May 1999 introduced a white flag with blue upper and gold lower symbols and black lettering, confirmed aboard Toia. The wharf-entrance logo instead had a blue ground, gold upper and white lower symbols and gold lettering. Funnel colours did not change. Rosanoski thought the long flag might have displaced the storm version, but tug flag sightings were too infrequent to establish that conclusively.