Tomlinson Fleet Corp.
The Tomlinson Fleet was owned by George Ashley Tomlinson of Duluth, Minnesota. In 1901, he bought the first vessel that would soon become part of an 18-vessel fleet. A significant ship in this fleet is the G.A. Tomlinson which was built as a bulk freighter named the D.O. Mills in 1907 by the Great Lakes Engineering Works of Ecorse, Michigan. The Mills was sold to the Cleveland-based company Tomlinson Fleet Corporation in 1959. Then it was renamed the G.A. Tomlinson and was converted to a self-loader. An early flag used by G.A. Tomlinson was a pennant divided diagonally with blue and yellow. Sometime in the 1950s, Tomlinson Fleet flew the flag seen here: a red pennant bordered in blue with blue lines forming a horizontal Y dividing the pennant into three sections, and with a white T in the fly. The flag in the NMGL collection is a whopping ten and a half feet long.
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