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Latest comment: 9 months ago5 comments2 people in discussion
The ship was not owned by the nation. It was owned by a company that registered the ship in Germany. It was built in the UK and for a time, was operated by a joint effort with a UK company. Ships belonging to Germany (ie warships) are not jointly operated with other nations. This is akin to saying the Japanese-owned Ever Given is Panamanian. This is what you get when everybody thinks a ship is owned by a nation when it just registered there. Llammakey (talk) 13:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
In the case of a merchant ship, the infobox's "Ship country" and "Ship flag" parameters show in which country she was registered; not whether she was "owned by a nation". Augsburg was registered in Hamburg, in the German Empire, throughout her career.
United Tyser Line neither owned Augsburg nor changed her registry. If it had, Lloyd's Register would have recorded it, and I would have included it in the article. The two German and one UK partners in UTL remained separate companies, each running their own ships, with their own crews, as contributions to a joint service.
The fact that SS Margariti was registered in a succession of different countries can be shown more concisely in the infobox. SS Ypiranga is an example. But Augsburg was only ever registered in one country, so that argument does not apply to her.
Ever Given is registered in Panama. In that sense she is Panamanian, and the infobox should display the flag and name of Panama. The fact that her owners are Japanese is irrelevant. But that difference between registry and ownership did not apply to Augsburg at any time in her career. Therefore Ever Given's case is no reason to delete "Germany" and the German flag from the head of Augsburg's infobox.
In the era in which Augsburg was built, ship-owners in numerous countries ordered ships from UK shipbuilders. Some of those ships, including historically prominent ones, then spent their entire career registered in one country. It would be illogical to remove "Netherlands" and the Dutch flag from the head of infobox of former NASM flagship SS Rotterdam (1908), for example.
I refer you to the "Template parameters" section of Template:Infobox ship career. The description of "Ship country" says "...either the nation a warship belongs to, or the nation of registry for civilian ships...". The description of "Ship flag" says "The ensign (maritime flag) associated with a ship". Augsburg was always registered in Hamburg, which throughout her career was always in Germany. Thus your argument falls.
Further, the description of "Ship country" separates flags of convenience as a special case. It says "... in case of civilian ships flying flags of convenience, this field should not be used". Thus your invokation of Ever Ready is irrelevant to Augsburg.
For cases such as SS Margariti, you and I seem to share a preference for flagicons rather shipboxflags. My preference is based on trying to keep an infobox as short and simple as possible, without omitting any of the information that belongs in it. However, as far as I can tell, editors who prefer to use multiple "Infobox ship career" modules are not breaking any rule.
Above I cited the case of SS Rotterdam (1908). The reason why, in that era, NASM bought a lot of its ships from Harland & Wolff, was that a controlling share in NASM was held by JP Morgan's IMM, whose preferred shipbuilder was H&W. By your argument, one could claim that, at that time, NASM was not really Dutch, and no Wikipedia article for a ship of that era should have "Netherlands" and the Dutch tricolour at the head of its infobox. A similarly wrong argument could be applied to ships of Red Star Line (registered in Belgium until the First World War), and IMM's UK shipping lines: Dominion, Leyland, and White Star. One would end up removing the blue ensign shipboxflag template from Wikipedia's RMS Titanic article.
I have searched the archives of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships for past discussions of ensigns, and for any consensus. The only discussions I found were about the civil ensigns of former UK dominions, and a lot about naval ensigns.
For all of the above reasons, I propose to reinstate "Germany" and the civil ensign of the German Empire in the "Ship country" and "Ship flag" parameters of Augsburg's infobox. If you still disagree, please use the "Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships" page to invite our colleagues to join the discussion, and help to resolve it.
