The Pennyworth was a freighter, built in Scotland in 1916. She was the first freighter to carry cargo to Canada's newly opened deepwater port on the Arctic Ocean, at Churchill, Manitoba. [1] [2]
She arrived on August 17, 1932, carrying a mixed cargo of liquor, china and glass tableware, binding twine, and lubricating oil, as well as a few passengers. She was the first freighter to arrive again in 1933, on August 13, 1933. [3]
Hudson Bay, sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada with a surface area of 1,230,000 km2 (470,000 sq mi). It is located north of Ontario, west of Quebec, northeast of Manitoba and southeast of Nunavut, but politically entirely part of Nunavut. Although not geographically apparent, it is for climatic reasons considered to be a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It drains a very large area, about 3,861,400 km2 (1,490,900 sq mi), that includes parts of southeastern Nunavut, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, all of Manitoba, and parts of the U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. Hudson Bay's southern arm is called James Bay.
The Nelson River is a river of north-central North America, in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The river drains Lake Winnipeg and runs 644 kilometres (400 mi) before it ends in Hudson Bay. Its full length is 2,575 kilometres (1,600 mi), it has mean discharge of 2,370 cubic metres per second (84,000 cu ft/s), and has a drainage basin of 1,072,300 square kilometres (414,000 sq mi), of which 180,000 square kilometres (69,000 sq mi) is in the United States.
Churchill is a town in northern Manitoba, Canada, on the west shore of Hudson Bay, roughly 140 km (87 mi) from the Manitoba–Nunavut border. It is most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading to the nickname "Polar Bear Capital of the World" that has benefited its burgeoning tourism industry.
Hudson Bay Railway is a Canadian short line railway operating over 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) of track in northeastern Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba.
The Arctic Bridge or Arctic Sea Bridge is a seasonal sea route approximately 6,700 kilometres long linking Russia to Canada, specifically the Russian port of Murmansk to the Hudson Bay port of Churchill, Manitoba.
Eurana was a steam cargo ship built on speculation in 1915 by Union Iron Works of San Francisco. While under construction, the ship was acquired by Frank Duncan McPherson Strachan to operate in the Atlantic trade for his family's Strachan Shipping Company. The vessel made several trips between the Southeast of the United States and Europe before being sold to the Nafra Steamship Company in 1917. The freighter then entered the Mediterranean trade where she remained until September 1918 when she was requisitioned by the Emergency Fleet Corporation and transferred to the United States Navy to transport military supplies prior to the end of World War I, and as a troop transport after the war's end. In October 1919, the ship was returned to Nafra, which was then being reorganized to become the Green Star Steamship Company. In 1923, Eurana and twelve other ships passed to the Planet Steamship Company, newly formed to receive them from Green Star's bankruptcy. The ship remained principally engaged in the West Coast to East Coast trade for the next seven years. In 1930, together with several other vessels, Eurana was purchased by the Calmar Steamship Corporation, and renamed Alamar. The ship continued carrying various cargo between the East and West Coasts of the United States through 1941. On 27 May 1942, while en route from Hvalfjord to Murmansk carrying lend-lease war materiel to the Soviet Union during World War II as part of Arctic convoy PQ-16, she was fatally damaged by German aircraft bombs and was consequently scuttled by a British submarine to prevent her from becoming a menace to navigation.
The Port of Churchill is a privately-owned port on Hudson Bay in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. Routes from the port connect to the North Atlantic through the Hudson Strait. As of 2008, the port had four deep-sea berths capable of handling Panamax-size vessels for the loading and unloading of grain, bulk commodities, general cargo, and tanker vessels. The port is connected to the Hudson Bay Railway, which shares the same parent company, and cargo connections are made with the Canadian National Railway system at HBR's southern terminus in The Pas. It is the only port of its size and scope in Canada that does not connect directly to the country's road system; all goods shipped overland to and from the port must travel by rail.
Port Nelson is on Hudson Bay, in Manitoba, Canada, at the mouth of the Nelson River. Its peak population in the early 20th century was about 1,000 people but today it is a ghost town. Immediately to the southsoutheast is the mouth of the Hayes River and the settlement of York Factory. Note that some books use 'Port Nelson' to mean the region around the mouths of the two rivers.
Joseph Lofthouse, Sr., was a Canadian Anglican bishop in the early 20th century.
SS West Eldara was a steel-hulled cargo ship built in 1918 as part of the United States Shipping Board's emergency World War I shipbuilding program.
SS Ithaka is a wrecked steam freighter and landmark on the coast of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba. Originally built as the lake freighter Frank A. Augsbury for the Canadian George Hall Coal & Shipping Corporation in 1922, she went on to sail for a variety of different owners in different locations being renamed to Granby in 1927, Parita II in 1948, Valbruna in 1951, Lawrencecliffe Hall in 1952, Federal Explorer in 1955 and finally Ithaka in 1960, before being wrecked later that year.
The Boeing RC-1, short for "Resource Carrier 1", was a design for an enormous cargo aircraft intended to haul oil and minerals out of the northern reaches of Alaska and Canada where ice-free ports were not available. It was optimized for short-haul missions only, carrying cargo to locations for loading onto ships, trains or pipelines. Depending on the role, the design was nicknamed "Brute Lifter" or "Flying Pipeline".
The Hudson Bay Railway (HBR) is a historic rail line in Manitoba, Canada to the shore of Hudson Bay. The venture began as a line between Winnipeg in the south and Churchill, and/or Port Nelson, in the north. However, HBR came to describe the final section between The Pas and Churchill.
The Aviators of Hudson Strait is a 1973 Canadian short documentary film produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) for the Canadian Department of National Defence.
The George Kydd is a tugboat operated in Churchill, Manitoba, the only Arctic Ocean port connected to the North America railroad grid.
George Kydd was a prominent Canadian engineer. He was known for playing key roles in large construction projects. From 1916 to 1918 he worked on the Trent-Severn Canal. From 1924 to 1927 he worked on the Welland Canal. In 1927 he was transferred to Canada's Department of Railways and Canals, and was appointed the supervising engineer in charge of building the Port facilities and rail terminal, in Churchill, Manitoba. Kydd supervised a construction force of over 1,500 workers.
CGS Graham Bell was a Canadian government tugboat that was wrecked, and beached, while operating out of Churchill, Manitoba. Entering service in 1929, Graham Bell was brought to Churchill specifically to aid in the construction of port facilities. Operating out of Churchill, Graham Bell left only during the Second World War after being loaned by the government to assist in towing duties along the East Coast of Canada. Following the war, the tugboat returned to Churchill.
Howard M. Hanna Jr. was a 500 ft (150 m) Great Lakes freighter that had a lengthy, 75-year career on the Great Lakes of Canada and America. Hanna was a product of the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The ship was commissioned by the Richardson Transportation Company to haul iron ore, coal and grain. She had a cargo capacity of 9,200 tons of bulk cargo, or 323,000 bushels of grain.
Arctic Gateway Group LP is a limited partnership that owns and operates the Port of Churchill and the Hudson Bay Railway, which connects The Pas to Churchill, Manitoba. It was originally formed as a public-private partnership; with a fifty percent share held by Missinippi Rail, a consortium of northern Manitoba First Nations and local governments, and the private share split between Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings and Regina-based grains company AGT Food and Ingredients. Fairfax and AGT transferred their shares of Arctic Gateway to OneNorth in March 2021, meaning that Arctic Gateway is completely owned by the local governments and Indigenous partners.
Cockaponset was a steam cargo ship built in 1918–1919 by Pacific Coast Shipbuilding Company of Bay Point for the United States Shipping Board as part of the wartime shipbuilding program of the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) to restore the nation's Merchant Marine. The vessel was largely employed on the Gulf Coast of the United States to Europe route until 1930 when she was laid up. In late 1940 the ship together with 15 other vessels was acquired by the British government to alleviate significant shortage of tonnage due to an ongoing German U-boat campaign. In May 1941 the freighter was torpedoed and sunk on her first war trip to the United Kingdom.
The Pennyworth, the only vessel to carry inbound cargo, brought liquor, binder twine, china, glass, and oil from Great Britain, and besides wheat, carried out a quantity of flour, rolled oats, bran and shorts.
When, however, we sailed from Antwerp, with our unusual and varied cargo, we inaugurated a new era for the Canadian north.
The first European ship of the season to penetrate the Arctic route through Hudson's Bay to this grain seaport in the center of the continent, the 11,000 ton British freighter Pennyworth, from Antwerp, arrived her yesterday.
Media related to Pennyworth (ship, 1916) at Wikimedia Commons