to India, New Zealand, Australia, the US and South America. The partners' first ship was the 335 ton barque Christabel, which James Alexander of Workington built new for them and launched on 17 September. Traditionally the ownership of merchant ships was divided into 64 shares. George Lamport senior helped to establish the business by buying a controlling interest of 34 shares in the new ship. After barely two months, on 14 November, George senior transferred his shares to the young partners, making them the controlling owners. House flag and funnel colours A mid-19th-century painting of the three-masted sailing ship Emma, which Lamport and Holt owned from 1847 to 1852, shows her flying a house flag from her foremast of three horizontal bars. The top and bottom bars are scarlet, and the middle bar is white defaced with the initials "L&H" in black. This remained Lamport and Holt's house flag throughout its 146 years of trading. The painting is now in George Holt junior's former home in Liverpool, Sudley House, which is now a museum and art gallery. When Lamport and Holt started to operate steamships in the 1860s they adopted pale blue as the main colour for the funnel, with a black top and a white band below the white top. Early evidence for this includes a painting of a steamship, the Galileo that Lamport and Holt operated from 1864 to 1869. The blue was a pale shade like that of the flag of Argentina. In 1932 Liverpool City Council presented Lamport and Holt with the city's colours and granted permission for the company's ships to fly the Liverpool Civic Flag when in port. At the same time Lamport and Holt darkened the blue of its funnels to match the civic colours. In 1936 the proportions of Lamport and Holt's funnel colours were in sevenths. The lowest three sevenths of the funnel were blue, the top two sevenths black and the two sevenths between were white. Early growth Lamport and Holt expanded their fleet. Their second ship was a larger barque, the 677 ton Junior, which was built in Quebec. Her first captain was John Eils, who had 16 shares in her and became a minority investor in many of Lamport and Holt's early fleet. By 1850 the partnership had a fleet of 10 sailing ships. In 1850 Lamport and Holt started to invest in steamships by buying minority shares