Built as a wooden three mast barquetine by Craipeau & Legobien, La Richardais, France for L.Girard, Cancale/St Malo, France.
Launched under the name Le CANCALAIS, named after the port she used as her homeport
Tonnage 375 grt, dim. 45 x 8 x 4.5m.
March 1920 delivered to owners.
Le CANCALAIS was the last French barquetine built for fishing on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.
03 June 1941. Le CANCALAIS was taken as a prize by HMCS ST CROIX on the Grand Banks.
1942 Sold or managed by G.T.Shaw, St John’s New Foundland, and rebuilt in a two mast motor vessel, , two engines and twin screws.
Tonnage 369 grt. Not renamed.
1946 Sold to Soc. D’Entreprise Maritime Commerciale, Antananarivo, Madagascar, not renamed. (Watercraft Philately gives that she was owned by Mr. Akgarely Daoudbey, before sold to SAMPMER but maybe managed by him. According Lloyds SAMPMER was and never had been the owner of the Le CANCALAIS)
1948 Sold to Soc. Anon. des Pêcheries Malgaches et Réunionnaises, Antananarivo.
Again refitted in a fishing vessel, most probably managed by SAMPMER.
She was the first fishing vessel managed by SAMPMER.
October 1948 she sailed for her first fishing voyage with destination the fishing waters off the Ile Saint Paul and Ile Amsterdam, this two islands are French territory in the southern Indian Ocean and part of FSAT.
During this voyage her radio transmitter broke down, and she could not make any contact with her home base in Madagascar.
Receiving no news from her, she was presumed missing.
The French navy dispatched a French frigate to these waters to search for the Le CANCALAIS, which found her after hail, busy fishing.
23 January 1949 she returned in Madagascar with two hundred tons of fish. It was a financial loss for the owners, however, since most of the fish could not be sold.
She made an other fishing trip to these two islands, thereafter used for two years around Madagascar as a fishing vessel.
She was lost the third quarter of 1951 when she grounded and broke in two during a loading operation in the port of Diego Suarez.
On French Southern and Antarctic Terr. 1998 29f20 sg 391.
Source: Some web-sites. Register of Merchant ships completed in 1920. Watercraft Philately Vol. 45 page 11.