Neptune

[shipstamps]

Alexander Stephens and Sons, built the steamer Neptune in December 1872, a wooden, screw, barque-rigged vessel of 684 gross tons, 616 under deck, 465 net; port of survey: Liverpool. Her owners were the Avalon Steam Ship Company, Ltd., (Job Brothers, managers), port of registry, St. John's. She had compound engines, two cylinders, 28 in. & 50 in. -30 in., 114 nominal horse power, built by Gourlay Brothers, Dundee.
The Neptune was engaged in the Newfoundland sealing industry and during her career brought in over a million pelts. In 1884, the Canadian Government chartered the Neptune for surveys in Hudson's Bay. There was a proposal that a railway be built from the prairies to the bay to open a new route for the export of grain.
An expedition set up ice observation posts and sought a potential railway terminus. Three years later, the Government of Canada chartered the Neptune for the winter mail run to Prince Edward Island. The scheme failed because although the vessel could withstand ice pressure, she was not an icebreaker. Early in this century, the Neptune returned to the Arctic to help establish Canadian sovereignty there. Eventually she sank in 1943 near St. John's. SG819

[aukepalmhof]

From earliest times Newfoundlanders could be found in every sort of ship from the Royal Navy to the fishing fleets, from the poles to the equator.
Most, at one time or another, went sealing from St. John’s to the ‘front’ or to the Gulf of St Lawrence. Whatever may be rights and wrongs of the sealing controversy today, the fact remains that for centuries it was the mainstay of Newfoundland and a nursery for the hardiest seamen to be found anywhere

Built as a wooden sealer under yard No 55 by A Stephen & Sons, Dundee for The Neptune SS Co. (Job Bros. & Co) St Johns, New Foundland.
30 December 1872 launched under the name NEPTUNE.
Tonnage 684 gross, 465 net, dim. 190.5 x 29.8 x 18.4ft (draught).
Powered by one compound steam engine, 114 nhp., one screw.
1873 Completed.

Her hull was made of oak and ironbark and greenheart. Originally barque rigged.
The seal fishery was highly competitive and little thought was given to safety of life, and lucky were those sufficiently successful to return in their overloaded vessels.
Used for sealing from St John’s. She arrived for the first time in St John’s February 1873.

It is said that the NEPTUNE once came back filled to the scuppers with 32.000 pelts on board and another 6.000 towing behind.
1884 Chartered by the Canadian Government for survey work in the Hudson Bay.
April 1885 she got in collision with an iceberg off New Foundland during a sealing voyage, she was crippled and got a broken bow.
1886 Used for a short period in the winter mail/passenger service between Georgetown and Pictou, but project failed, she was not an icebreaker.
Around 1900 her yards and topmasts were stripped, later her mainmast was removed and she got a superstructure erected in the midship.
1903-1904 used for the Eastern Arctic Geological Survey under command of Capt Sam Bartlett.
1943 During heavy weather she sank off St John’s.

Laos 1987 3k sg984, scott?

Source: some copied from Ships of Canada. Log Book. Some web-sites. Miramar Ship Index.