Ketch Hand: The twilight of sail in South Australian Waters

BOATS MARITIME

168 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.  #040822 First Edition

Thiele, Ron N., 1926-  |  Sailing ships — South Australia — Personal narratives.  |  Coastwise shipping — South Australia — Personal narratives.

Ketches were integral and unique to South Australia’s maritime history. They connected city and country before the advent of road and rail, carrying farm products, grain and minerals to the city and shipping general produce to rural ports. The ketch fleet peaked in the 1880s and 1890s when more than seventy ketches and schooners traded out of Port Adelaide. During the twentieth century the fleet witnessed constant change and reinvention in a struggle to remain viable. By the 1920s competition from steamers and improved road transport saw most ketches fitted with auxiliary engines. They numbered thirty in the 1950s and three decades later, the last two working ketches, Nelcebee and Falie, were retired from service. The collection captures the growth of the ketch industry, ketch construction, the ketch trade and the rural economy, life and work on the ketches, ketch owners and families, the decline of ketches and the last ketch workers, and ketch culture – the ketch regattas, South Australian cultural memory, nostalgia, and the role of ketches in port and community identity.