Antarctic veteran David Dodd, who is secretary of the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions Club, said the workboat was built as the Macpherson Robertson, and was used in the Antarctic from 1956 to 1978, when she was sold and renamed Porpoise.

Mr Dodd said the “25-foot” (7.6-metre) Porpoise was based in Moreton Bay, Brisbane, until 2006, when she was sold to “a Newcastle boat-builder”. From there, the trail goes cold.

“Macpherson Robertson was a famous Australian confectioner whose company, MacRobertsons, produced the original Cherry Ripes and Freddo Frogs,” Mr Dodd said.

“He was a great philanthropist who was knighted in 1932 for his work supporting Australia’s Antarctic missions. The boat named after him was loaded each year as a ship’s tender on board the famous “Dan” Danish ice-breakers, including the Nella Dan.”

“The ANARE Club is interested in finding this historically important vessel, which was affectionately known as Lollypop by those who sailed her in many important Antarctic coastal surveys. We know she was here in your area just 10 years ago.”

Anyone with information can contact Mr Dodd at secretary@anareclub.org.au

A GROUP of Antarctic veterans searching for an historic Antarctic workboat last seen in Newcastle says the Hunter Region has a “remarkable and proud” association with Antarctic exploration.

David Dodd, the Melbourne-based secretary of the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions Club – the ANARE  Club – said on Friday that Newcastle was the last port of call for the Aurora, a famous three-masted steam yacht that was built in the 1870s as a whaler and then used in Antarctica from 1910.

Under the famous explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, she was used in what Mr Dodd describes as “a disastrous attempt to walk across the Antarctic continent” to rescue a stranded part of Shackleton’s expedition, known as the “Ross Sea Party”.

Mr Dodd said Shackleton sold the Aurora in January 1917, and she was converted to a coal ship.

On June 20, 1917, the Aurora left Newcastle with a cargo of coal, bound for Chile, and was never seen again. Mr Dodd said she went down with the loss of all 22 on board including her bosun, “Scotty” Paton, who had been a veteran of expeditions under Shackleton and another Antarctic hero, Robert F. Scott.

Records show that almost five months later, on December 5, a coastal steamer, the Coombar, picked up a lifebuoy in the water off Grafton, covered in barnacles and marked “S.Y. Aurora”.

She is regarded as a maritime casualty of World War I, possibly sunk by a German raider, SMS Wolf, which lay minefields in waters off the Australian east coast in a 450-day voyage that saw her return to Germany, carrying more than 400 prisoners of war, in February 1918.

Mr Dodd said a commemorative service, marking the centenary of the loss of the Aurora, was being planned for June next year.

In more modern times, Mr Dodd said the first Australian-built icebreaker, Aurora Australis, was still “rendering faithful service in its annual re-supply of our Antarctic bases and Macquarie Island” a quarter of a century after it began.

Aurora Australis was the last ship built at Carrington Slipways at Tomago, the shipyard that was subsequently owned by Australian Submarine Corporation and Forgacs, before being sold earlier this year to Western Australian engineering company Civmec.

Mr Dodd said Australia and Australians had played important roles in the scientific and geographical exploration of Antarctica, and the ANARE Club’s mission to find the lost vessel Macpherson Robertson – since renamed the Porpoise – would fill a missing link in the chain of history.

“Hopefully one of the Newcastle Herald’s readers will know where she is,” Mr Dodd said.