American Export Lines, Inc. - New York

Beautiful engraved specimen certificate from the American Export Lines . This historic document was printed by Security-Columbian Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of King Neptune flanked by two steamships. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President and Secretary. Transistion certificate to the American Export Isbrandtsen Lines, Inc which is overprinted in red on face of certificate.


Certificate Vignette

The American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines, New York, was the leading US-flag shipping company between the US east coast and the Mediterranean from 1919 to 1977, offering both Cargo ship services and Passenger ship services, until declaring bankruptcy and was acquired by Farrell Lines, New York.

American Export Lines

Export Steamship Corporation was organized in 1919 and began operating cargo services to the Mediterranean from New York. The word "American" was added in the 1920s to emphasize its ties to the U.S.. In 1931, they placed in service four cargo-passenger liners, Excalibur, Excambion, Exeter and Exochorda, known as the "Four Aces". The timing of their new service was unfortunately at the beginning of the depression. The company went through various reorganisations and became the American Export Lines in 1936. In 1964, it merged with Isbrandtsen Co. to become the American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines.

Isbrandtsen Steamship Company was established by Hans Isbrandtsen after the breakup of ISMOLCO in 1943, his joint venture under “PERMANENT SPECIAL INSTRUCTION ONE” with his cousin A. P. Møller, the shipping magnate who formed the great Mærsk Line. A. P. Møller went on to found the Interseas Shipping Co., Inc., the predecessor to the Moller Steamship Company, an agent for the Mærsk Line in the United States ¹. Isbrandtsen Co. traded mainly with the Far East. Hans's son Jakob took over the company in 1953 and bought American Export Lines in 1960. The purchase was approved by the United States Maritime Administration in 1962. Jakob Isbrandtsen merged Isbrandtsen Co. with American Export Lines in 1964 to form American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines.

American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines

Jakob Isbrandtsen formed the American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines in 1964 by merging his two shipping companies. This merger ended in 1973.

American Export Lines

American Export Lines (AEL), re-emerged after the dissolution of the American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines in 1973. After heavy losses and unable to meet crippling debt payments, AEL went into bankruptcy in 1977, with Farrell Lines buying its remaining ships and port operations in New York. Farrell Lines was acquired by Royal P&O Nedlloyd in July 2000, in turn, the Royal P&O Nedlloyd was acquired by A.P. Moller-Maersk Group in August 2005. The port operations formerly associated with the American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines became part of the Dubai Ports World controversy in February 2006.

Passenger shipping services

Their first passenger ships were actually combination passenger-cargo ships, known as "Four Aces", Excalibur, Exeter, Excambion and Exochorda. These ships were first launched in 1931 and with the exception of the Exochorda, lost during World War II as a result of enemy fire. The latter ship was sold to Turkish Maritime Lines and renamed Tarsus.

The tonnage was replaced with c-3 class troop transports with the same names. They were given luxury appointments for 125 passengers as well as sufficient cargo-carrying capacity.

The crowning achievement in American Export's passenger services were their largest and best-known liners, the SS Constitution and SS Independence.

History from Wikipedia and OldCompanyResearch.com.

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About Specimens

Specimen Certificates are actual certificates that have never been issued. They were usually kept by the printers in their permanent archives as their only example of a particular certificate. Sometimes you will see a hand stamp on the certificate that says "Do not remove from file".

Specimens were also used to show prospective clients different types of certificate designs that were available. Specimen certificates are usually much scarcer than issued certificates. In fact, many times they are the only way to get a certificate for a particular company because the issued certificates were redeemed and destroyed. In a few instances, Specimen certificates we made for a company but were never used because a different design was chosen by the company.

These certificates are normally stamped "Specimen" or they have small holes spelling the word specimen. Most of the time they don't have a serial number, or they have a serial number of 00000. This is an exciting sector of the hobby that grown in popularity over the past several years.