Neptune, Ruler of the Sea

DESCRIPTION: "The Neptune, ruler of the sea, she rides in court today, Filled up with white-coats to the hatch and her colors flying gay.... While bats did rattle on their heads, the murder then began. " Captain Kane's ship returns home with 30,000 harp seals.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1960 (Leach-FolkBalladsSongsOfLowerLabradorCoast)
KEYWORDS: hunting sea ship
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1873-1943 - Career of the sealer "Neptune"
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Leach-FolkBalladsSongsOfLowerLabradorCoast 81, "Neptune, Ruler of the Sea" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff, p. 119, "'Neptune,' Ruler of the Sea" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST LLab081 (Partial)
Roud #9979
NOTES [1021 words]: There were at least three major Newfoundland ships named Neptune, the first of which, a passenger bark, was a famous shipwreck of 1830 (Baehre, pp. 189-212), and the second of which, a schooner, went missing in 1929 (O'Neill, p. 985), but their sealer namesake still had many more years of service ahead of her and was surely the best-known of the bunch. Greene, p. 53, declares that "The finest, if not the largest of [the wooden-walled sealers], were named the Terra Nova and the Neptune -- each of them having for many springs their fighting claims to be the Commodore of the Fleet's command."
Leach's text (the source also of Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff's) gives the ship's master as "Captain Kane." This is almost certainly an error -- in fact, probably a double error, one by the singer or author, one by the transcriber. The transcriber's error is the name "Kane"; it should be "Captain Kean," after Abram Kean (for whom see "Captain Abram Kean") and his many seal-hunting uncles, sons, and other relatives.
But although members of the Kean family commanded many, many ships over the years, none of them ever took charge of the Neptune. The list of her captains, on p. 93 of Feltham (and checked against Chafe, p. 102, for the years up to 1923, and against Winsor, p. 55), includes four members of the Barbour dynasty (probably Alphaeus, Baxter, George, and Samuel), the famous Robert Bartlett (for whom see "Captain Bob Bartlett"), William Winsor (for whom see see "First Arrival from the Sea Fishery S. S. Fogota, 1912"), Samuel Blandford (for whom see "Sealer's Song (I)"), Edward White Sr., and three others not quite so well known.
As a wild guess, perhaps the reference to Captain Kane is to Abram Kean in his unofficial role as commodore of the sealing fleet, which would explain the reference to "fly[ing] his long burgee." (Either that, or the line floating in from a song about a sailing club or something.)
The Neptune was built in 1872-1873 in Dundee, reportedly under the supervision of Captain Edward White (Ryan/Drake, p. 70; this page also has a picture of White), who commanded her 1873-1879 (Chafe, p. 102); she was rebuilt shortly before 1900, with her masts reduced so that she no longer took a full set of sails (Ryan/Drake, p. 20, who have a picture of her in her rebuilt state; Feltham, p. 177, and WInsor, p. 55, also appear to show her after her rebuilding. A third photo, on p. 185 of Feltham, shows her alongside two other sealers as they prepare to go to the ice. Candow, p. 56, shows her in 1901. Thorne, p. 102, says she was built with three masts but the middle mast was "soon" removed).
The Neptune was famous as the only ship to take more than a million seals in her career (Feltham, p. 92); eleven times in the period 1873-1900, she took more seals than any other ship in the fleet (Feltham, p. 93). She participated in the seal hunt for 66 years from 1873 to 1941, missing only 1904, 1932. and 1933 (Winsor, p. 55). She had a 120 horsepower engine, giving her a lot of power and making her unusually able to make it into the ice (Feltham, pp. 92-93). This probably contributed to her longevity (as did World War I, which saw many of the newer steel ships requisitioned for other uses or simply destroyed; Feltham, p. 95).
In addition to her sealing work, she did some arctic voyaging. Lubbock, p. 415, says that, in 1882, she was sent to supply Adolphus Greely's expedition to Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island (but failed to reach it, contributing to the tragedy described in "Hurrah for Baffin's Bay"); In 1905, Sam Bartlett (for whom see "Captain Bob Bartlett") brought her home to St. John's after making a trip to Hudson's Bay that took place later in the season than any other up to that time (Horwood, p. 91); Ryan-Ice, p. 393, says the trip was intended to maintain Canadian sovereignty.
There were varying opinions about the Neptune's condition by the time of her end; William Gillett said that she so rotten that you could pick the wood off her walls with your fingers, and she leaked so much that she couldn't sail in a gale (Ryan-Last, pp. 325-326). Thorne, p. 104, also calls her leaky. Arthur O'Neill says she "was the worst boat that Job's had. They said she was hogged [bent] four or five feed in the center of the keel" (Ryan-Last, p. 326). But Robert Louis Stevenson (yes, that's the name given) said that she remained fast and safe until the end (ibid). Given what most of those old sealers were like, I suspect the critics had the truth of it.
She finally was lost in a storm on March 4, 1943 while carrying coal (Winsor, p. 55); the tug sent to help her managed to take off her crew, but it was too late to save the leaking ship (Feltham, p. 97; Doyle Roberts, on p. 325 of Ryan-Last, seems to say she was deliberately sunk outside St. John's to prevent her from blocking the entrance to the port). That left only two of the old wooden walled sealers (for the final end, see "The Ice-Floes" and "The Last of the Wooden Walls"; also "The Terra Nova"). Thorne, on p. 105, has two photos of her as she sank; there are other photos of her on pp. 102 and 103. Thorne also has several photos of the Tenacity, the tug that tried and failed to save her (pp. 69, 71, 104).
In all, she took 1,230,731 seals in the course of 66 years (Feltham, p. 93) -- an average of 18,647 per year. Comparing this to some other long-lived sealers (data taken from various pages of Feltham), the Eagle (II) averaged 15,816 over 44 years; the Ranger managed 12,932 over 68 years, and the Terra Nova took in an average of 16,701 over 51 years (although she lost several of her best years to arctic missions). So arguably no ship was as successful for as long.
The Neptune is also mentioned in "Captains and Ships," "The Sealer's Song (II)," "Ballad of Captain Bob Bartlett," "Success to the Hardy Sealers," "Loss of the S. S. Algerine," and "Cotton's Patch (II)." See the latter song for her brief career as an "aircraft carrier." She is almost certainly also the Nipshun of "Success to Every Man." Ryan-Ice, p. 308, has another poem which mentions her. - RBW
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