Scotia (cable ship)

[shipstamps]

Featured on the 40 cents is the cable ship Scotia, built by R. Napier and Company, Glasgow, for Samuel Cunard in 1861. She held the Atlantic Blue Riband for five years. Length 379 ft., b.p., 400 ft. o.a., beam 76 ft. 6 in. over paddle-boxes; 30 ft. 6 in. depth of hold; 20 ft. draft.
As a passenger ship she carried 300 at full capacity, and 1,400 tons of cargo, but she could not compete with the screw ships after 13 years of service and she was sold to the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, who converted her to a twinscrew cable ship, in 1879. The contract for the conversion was awarded to Laird Brothers, Birkenhead.  In 1903 she was resold to the Commercial Pacific Cable Company. The Scotia laid cable between the Cocos Island and Cottesloe, near Perth, in the early 1900s. She was finally lost at Guam in the Ladrone Islands when she broke her back on a reef at Catalan Island in 1904.

CABLE WORK

1879    Penang - Malacca - Singapore - Banjoewangie
1880    Aden - Zanzibar
    Renewed major part of 1866 Trans Atlantic cable
1882    Greetsiel - Borkum - Valentia
1883    Vladivostock - Nagasaki - Shanghai
    Hong Kong - Foochow - Shanghai
1884    England - Spain
    Madeira - Cape St Vincent
    Cape St Vincent - Pernambuco
1885    Bathurst - Freetown - Accra - Lagos - Brass - Bonny
1887    Porthcurno - Carcavelos - Gibraltar - Malta - Zante
1889    Cape Town - Mossamedes
1890    Sydney - Wellington
    Aden - Suez
1896    Greetsiel - Borkum (Germany) - Vigo (Spain)
1891    Fano - Oye
1893    Zanzibar - Seychelles - Mauritius
1894    UK - Newfoundland
    Singapore - Labuan - Hong Kong
1898    Porthcurno - Gibraltar
    Jamaica - Turks Island - Bermuda
1899    Para - Pernambuco - Rio de Janeiro - Maldonado - Montevideo
1901    Cocos - Cottesloe - Glenelg
    North Sydney (Nova Scotia) - St Pierre et Miquelon - Bay Roberts

"Bill Glover/Atlantic-Cable.com Website"
http://atlantic-cable.com/stamps/index.htm
and other websites.
Cocos SG29, SG129 Sierra Leone SG829b 967 Mauritius SG895 Seychelles SG840

[hindle]

There is also a Scotia depicted on Sierra Leone SG 829.

I don't have the stamp, so I cannot compare the image.

Is it the same ship?

Richard A. Hindle.

[john sefton]

It is the same Richard.