 Nascopie in thePort of Montreal, 1945 | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name | RMSNascopie |
| Owner | Hudson's Bay Company |
| Ordered | 6 March 1928 |
| Builder | Swan Hunter andWigham Richardson,Newcastle upon Tyne |
| Launched | December 7, 1911 |
| In service | 1912 |
| Identification |
|
| Nickname(s) | Eastern Arctic Patrol |
| Fate | Wrecked July 21, 1947 |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage | 2,521 GRT |
| Length | 285.5 ft (87.0 m) |
| Beam | 43.5 ft (13.3 m) |
| Draft |
|
| Installed power | 1x 3-cyl. triple expansion steam engine, single shaft. Output: 342nhp |
| Propulsion | 1 screw |
| Speed | 14.1 knots |
RMSNascopie was asteamship built bySwan Hunter andWigham Richardson ofNewcastle upon Tyne,England.[1] She was launched on December 7, 1911, and achieved speeds of 14.1 knots (26 km/h) during hersea trials. She was powered by triple expansion steam engines with cylinders 21.5, 35.5 and 58 inches (546, 902, and 1,473 mm) in diameter and a stroke of 42 inches (1067 mm). Her boiler pressure was 180pounds-force per square inch (1.24MPa) and the two main boilers were 15 feet in diameter and 11.5 feet long, fired by six furnaces.
Nascopie was fitted with an ice breaker bow and her plates were of five-eighths-inch steel. She carriedMarconi apparatus located beside the wheelhouse on the upper deck. Her maiden crew was from theDominion of Newfoundland underCaptain Smith and they sailed forPenarth,South Wales, in late January 1912 to take on a load ofcoal bound forSt. John's, Newfoundland. That winter she was employed in the annualseal hunt of the coast ofNewfoundland under Captain Barbour for theJob Brothers mercantile business at St. John's.
Soon afterWorld War I broke out the Russian government was in dire need of ships with ice breaking capacity, It placed orders with British shipyards and at the same time began a campaign of purchasingicebreakers on the open market. Russian representatives first went toOttawa and purchased the icebreakersEarl Grey andMinto. They then purchased from theReid Newfoundland Company the icebreaking mail steamersBruce andLintrose. They then began negotiations withA. J. Harvey and Co. for the purchase ofBellaventure,Bonaventure, andAdventure and with Job Brothers forBeothic andNascopie. They purchased all except forNascopie which continued her supply route to service theHudson Bay operations.
In 1916, when chartered by the government of France, and carrying cargo fromRussia toNewfoundland, she encountered a German U-boat, and exchanged gunfire.[1] She drove off the U-boat, but was credited with sinking it, at the time.[1]
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George E. Mack (1887–1941) a keen amateur photographer, joined the HBC in 1910, he served on theNascopie twice, firstly as Second Officer in 1912, then again as Captain from 1915 to 1920; first as Master and then as Ice Master/Pilot, when he became a Superintendent of the Hudson's Bay Company from 1920 to 1928.[2] He took many photographs of the local communities the ship visited.
In 1934 Nascopie took for the first time a Governor of the company to ever visit Hudson Bay. HBC Governor Patrick Ashley Cooper and his wife joined her in Montreal and sailed as far as Churchill. In 1937, the ship enabled the Hudson's Bay Company in establishingFort Ross. Sailing from the east, she met the schoonerAklavik, which had sailed from the west into Bellot Strait. This meeting of the two ships at Fort Ross, brought into reality for the first time the Northwest Passage.[3]
During the second World War, she was fitted with anti-aircraft gun, and a 3.7 inch Naval gun, she was used to ship carrycryolite for makingAluminum for the war effort.[3]
Nascopie was wrecked nearCape Dorset near the southern tip ofBaffin Island on an uncharted reef,[2] July 21, 1947.[1]
Named after First Nations people of Quebec and Labrador, Nascopie was designed and built in England at Wallsend on Tyne in 1911.
https://wantedonthevoyage.blogspot.com/2023/07/arctic-lifeline-hbss-nascopie.html comprehensive design and operation history of the Nascopie with many photographs
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