Adelaide Steamship Company

The photo above is from the period when [[../people/shenton.html|George Shenton]]'s house in [[../westend/cliff2.html|Cliff Street]] (after he relocated to Perth) was in use as the headquarters in Fremantle of the Adelaide Steamship Company - the name of which on the building would be more easily seen if I had taken a better photo of the photograph hanging in the company's later building at [[../buildings/steamship.html|12 Mouat Street]]. I'll ask the owner if he could kindly let me have a better copy, and to give me some dates.

Wikipedia:
The company was formed in September 1875 in Adelaide, South Australia, by a group of pastoralists and businessmen, some of whom already had steamship interests in the Spencer Gulf, namely Federal Wharf Co. Ltd, Port Adelaide Dredging Company Ltd and Spencer Gulf Shipping Co. Ltd, and was incorporated on 8 October 1875.

Steamship Building, 12 Mouat Street

Wikipedia continues:
Its promoters and founding directors included Andrew Tennant, Robert Barr Smith, and Thomas Elder of Elder Smith & Co Ltd. The first ship of the new company was Flinders. In July 1876 the company's leading promoters amalgamated their private ship-owning interests to form the Spencer's Gulf Steamship Co Ltd, trading in South Australian coastal waters. The two companies amalgamated in December 1882. The fleet circled the coast from Derby in northern Western Australia to Cairns in northern Queensland. Shipping operations were supported by a large network of agency offices in almost every major Australian port. ...
On 1 January 1964, its interstate fleet was merged with that of [[../buildings/mcilwraith.html|McIlwraith McEacharn]] in a new company, Associated Steamships Limited, in which Adelaide Steamship Company held 40%. Also in 1964, the merged company developed the world's first purpose built container ship, MV Kooringa. Bulkships Limited, in which Adelaide Steamship held a 40% interest in 1965, acquired all the shares in Associated Steamship Limited in 1968. In 1977 the company's interest in Bulkships was disposed of and Adelaide Steamship Company ceased its connection with ship owning and operating. The company did, however, retain its interests in Tug boats and Tug boat operations and by the late 1980s, Adelaide Steamship was one of Australia's oldest surviving industrial companies. ...
Ships owned and operated by Adelaide Steamship Company included: Argosy Lemal, later Booya, SS Beltana, HMAS Bungaree, SS Camira Built 1894 as SS Clan Campbell, SS Cantara Built 1894 as SS Clan Ross, SS Ceduna Built 1894 as SS Clan Mackay, SS Ferret, MV Kooringa, SS Koombana, HMAS Manoora, TSMV Manunda, MV Minnipa, MV Moonta, SS Paringa, Polly Woodside (1922–1953), SS Warilda, later HMAT Warilda, SS Willochra, later RMS Fort Victoria, SS Yongala.

[[../people/lilly.html|James Lilly]], 'father of WA shipping', sold his shipping company to the ASC.

References and Links

Wikipedia page.

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 9 May, 2020 and hosted at freotopia.org/commerce/adelaidesteamshipco.html (it was last updated on 25 November, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.