Counties Ship Management

Counties Ship Management Co. Ltd. (CSM) was an ocean-going merchant shipping company based in the United Kingdom. During the Second World War CSM merchant ships made a substantial contribution to supplying the British war effort, at a cost of 13 ships lost and 163 officers and men killed.

In 1920 Manuel Kulukundis (1898–1988) from the Aegean island of Kasos moved to London, England and started work in a shipping office. In 1921 he and his cousin Minas Rethymnis founded the Rethymnis & Kulukundis shipbroking business in London. R&K was nominally a ship management company, but through a network of family and business relationships this was increasingly intertwined with actual ownership by members of the Kulukundis and related families.

The Royal Mail Case criminal prosecution of Lord Kylsant, director of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSP), in 1931 led to the liquidation of that company in 1932. RMSP was restructured as Royal Mail Lines and companies connected with it also had to restructure. One of these was Elder Dempster Lines, whose fleet included 24 First World War standard cargo ships that it had to sell quickly and at low cost in order to survive. R&K and its Greek associates bought many of the Elder Dempster ships, and with Greek banks and British shipping companies created a new company called Tramp Ship Development Co Ltd to facilitate this.

R&K also started owning ships in its own right. At first they were registered in Greece, but from 1934 some R&K ships were registered in the UK. R&K gave the ships a "house" image by giving each one a name beginning with "Mount". Their funnels were black with a white band above a blue band, and a five-pointed red star straddling the boundary between the two bands. The white and blue bands denoted R&K's Greek heritage. Other shipping companies had previously used a red star as a badge, notably Robert Kermit Red Star Line (1818–67) and Red Star Line (1871 onwards).

Kulukundis had a Greek ship-owning company, Kulukundis Shipping Co SA, whose ships were managed by R&K. Its ships included the Illinois which it bought from Compagnie Générale Transatlantique in 1934, renamed Mount Pentelikon and registered in Piraeus.

R&K bought old second-hand vessels and established a nominally separate British company to own each ship. Surrey Steamship Co. Ltd. was created to own Box Hill, which Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn on the River Tyne had built in 1920 as the Glentworth. Sussex Steamship Co. Ltd. was created to own Bury Hill, which had been built by Richardson, Duck and Company at Thornaby-on-Tees in 1917 as the Cardigan. They were followed in 1935 by the First World War standard cargo ship Hampton Hill which had been built in 1919 as War Jasper. Acquisitions in 1936 included two more First World War standard ships: the Campden Hill and the Muneric. Other 1936 acquisitions included Inverleith which had been built as a tanker but converted to a dry cargo ship.

R&K also bought new ships. William Hamilton & Co built Mount Ida for R&K in 1938, who created Atlanticos Steam Ship Co to own her and registered her in Piraeus, Greece. On 9 October 1939 she ran aground on Ower Bank in the North Sea off Norfolk, England. The Cromer Lifeboat HF Bailey rescued all hands but one later died of his injuries.

In 1934 R&K created Counties Ship Management Ltd (CSM) to manage ships owned by both its own companies and others. CSM ships had a buff funnel with a black top, and a red letter "C" inside a red circle on the buff part.