Guano Seal, Anglo Continental, Anchor, Image & Found by Peter van Lierop.
Found in Gemonde, Netherlands, 19mm, 8.4g.
ANGLO-CONT curving downwards / VORM / (O)HLENDORFF / SCHE / GUANO WERKE curving upwards // anchor AVG COW to sides vertically, DEPOSE curving upwards below*
*with the aide of a [/url=http://www.bagseals.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=20933]parallel seal[/url].
An unusual variant of the Anglo Continental / Ohlendorff guano seal with the usual cornucopia trade mark replaced by an anchor.
AngloContinental, originally Ohlendorff & Co., had been founded in 1858, transformed into the Anglo-Continentale corporation in 1883, taken over in 1937 by Fisons Ltd and closed in 1946.
See Heimat und Geschichtverein Nörvenich, "The Anglo-Continentale Guanowerke were one of the largest global companies in their time with a share capital of 16 million. 6000 quintals of guano were powdered and bagged here every day. ... One of the largest importers in the second half of the 19th century was the Hamburg trading company Ohlendorff & Co, based in Hamburg, London, Antwerp and Emmerich a. Rh. Up to 140 shiploads were imported annually. The brothers Albertus Ohlendorff (1834 - 1894) and Heinrich Ohlendorff (1836 - 1928), who were also called "Schiet Barons" or "Guano Knights", became so rich in guano that they Bismarck and the Reich government had their own newspaper, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. They were ennobled by Wilhelm I and made barons by Wilhelm II.
On October 22nd, 1883, the company Ohlendorff & Co. was transformed into the Anglo-Continentale corporation (formerly Ohlendorff`sche) Guano-Werke in Hamburg. They continued to import and process guano mainly from Peru. Until 1913 the company owned foreign plants in London and Antwerp, as well as a Thomas slag mill in Longwy-Bas in France, which, like the plant in Emmerich, were all lost as a result of the war. The loss of the factories in London and Antwerp was particularly difficult for society, as there was extensive, profitable business there. As a result of the loss of guano imports caused by World War I, the guano business was brought to a standstill. Before the First World War, imports from Peru were free and unlimited, and the Anglo-Continentale Guanowerke had a kind of monopoly for Germany. In 1908 the German chemist Fritz Haber succeeded in synthetically producing ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen - for which he received the patent (Haber-Bosch process) in 1910 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918; In doing so, he secured not only the production of artificial fertilizers, but also the munitions production for Germany during the First World War. The introduction of the Haber-Bosch process meant a drastic reduction in the need for guano. After 1914, the company's main production was almost completely converted to the manufacture of superphosphate and related products."
