Eclipse

auxiliary steam whaler, built 1867

About MeAuxiliary steam whaler built by Alexander Hall and Sons in 1867. Eclipse was commanded by Captain David Gray, who came from a famous Peterhead whaling family. He was called the Prince of Whalers, though he hunted seals as well as whales east of Greenland because the Greenland Right Whale was seriously overfished. Like all whalers, Eclipse was heavily reinforced with extra beams and layers of planking to withstand the pressure of the ice. Sold by Gray in 1892, Eclipse worked from Dundee until 1909. A Norwegian company sent the vessel to the Antarctic sealing unti 1913, when it was purchased by the Imperial Russian Navy. After World War One, Eclipse became a supply ship for Soviet expeditions into the Arctic. Eclipse sank in 1927, was raised in 1929 and renamed the Lomonosov, then acted as a Soviet oceanographic and meteorological survey ship. Seventy four years after it was launched into Aberdeen harbour, Eclipse/Lomonosov was destroyed by a German bomb during an air raid in 1941 on the northern Soviet port of Archangel'sk.