LAWSON-BATEY TUGS LTD.

The company advertised as the Black Diamond & Blue Cross Line. Initially the tugs retained Lawson or Batey funnel colours. L392 is presumed to have been the flag from 1920 until after the Second World War; the source cautions that this flag is itself a presumption.

Uniformity came only after the war. Joffre in 1956 shows the disappearance of Lawson colours, while Quaysider’s 1955 delivery photograph is the first evidence of the L84 flag. Merchant Ships gives L230 as an alternative former-Lawson funnel and shows L84 without a black top. Photographs generally show no top or a very narrow one; Brown 1995 makes it deeper, while Mitchell omits it. The Maltese Cross history dates L84 after the war until 1958 and again under Tyne & Wear Tugs from 1986, with Tyne Tugs colours during the intervening charter period.