The Sailmakers of Port Adelaide: William Russell's Legacy
William Russell was one of several sailmakers located in Port Adelaide through the 1800s and 1900s. He first learned about sailmaking as an apprentice under Captain Edward French before entering a business partnership as a sailmaker and ship chandler. He later ran his own business alone until his death in 1924.
From Orkney to Port Adelaide
According to History SA, William Russell was born (at Odinstone on the island of Shapinsay) in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, on 14 March 1842, to tenant farmer William Russell and his wife Elizabeth (née Bews).
The Russell family — parents William and Elizabeth, along with their two sons James and William and two daughters Elizabeth and Janet — was forced to immigrate to South Australia aboard the vessel William Hammond as government-sponsored immigrants. Young William Russell was the youngest of the four siblings. The William Hammond departed Southampton on 21 October 1853 and arrived at Port Adelaide after a passage of 93 days.
William Russell married Jane McGregor on 13 July 1865. They had a son, also called William (William Henry Russell, born 1873, died 1948, aged 75), and two daughters.
Learning the Trade
After finishing his apprenticeship under Captain Edward French, William Russell worked as a foreman at Clarke, McKenzie & Co., ships' chandlers of Port Adelaide. Russell started his own business in 1867, operating from a shop on the corner of Divett and Todd streets, Port Adelaide.
In 1871, he and a past fellow worker, Henry William Thompson, started a partnership together and opened their own shop when they purchased Clarke, McKenzie & Co., their former employers. They operated from a building owned by Henry Way Rymill that stood on McLaren Parade, Port Adelaide, near McLaren Wharf. Under the partnership, the business shifted to primarily acting as a ships' chandlery that also specialised in the manufacture and repair of rigging and sails.
The partnership between Thompson and Russell was dissolved by mutual consent in 1874, and Russell became a sole proprietor once more — this time as owner of a business specialising in sail-making, ships' chandlery and provisioning in Divett Street, at the corner of Divett and Todd streets.
The McLaren Parade Shop
This photo shows William Russell and his employees outside one of Russell's premises:
It is said that Hugh Quin and 'James' Norris went on to establish their own business at the building that stood on McLaren Parade, near McLaren Wharf.
The photo was taken about 1940 (or 1950, according to the back of the photo) by Mr RP Nicholas, who states the address was "4 McLaren Parade, Port Adelaide," adding that "Hugh Quin started business here in (September) 1921." The sign on the left of the door appears to read 'Norris', while the sign on the right reads 'H. Quin'. 'James' Norris retired from the business in 1940, around the time of this photo.
It is stated on the back of the photograph that Quin's name was painted on the wall of the building — "H. Quin Sailmaker Upstairs" — and that the signage on the other side of the door read "Norris & Quin," later changed to "Norris & Son":
This slightly different version of the photo seems to confirm that:
Research into the two signal cannon located at the door entrance suggests the building was owned by Henry Way Rymill, who donated the cannon to the Royal South Australian Yacht Squadron when the building was to be demolished. Both cannon have since been restored, mounted on carriages, and remain on display at the RSAYS at Outer Harbor — a story linked to this one but covered separately.
Hugh Quin's grandson has suggested that the modern address of the McLaren Parade building may correspond to today's No. 4 McLaren Parade, though this has not been confirmed through title or lot-boundary evidence. McLaren Parade did not have street numbers during the period when French, Russell and Quin operated there.
The original SAHB building stood at about the same site and carried a time-ball signal mast on its roof:
This photo features on page 91 of Walk Round Corners … Port Adelaide by John Couper-Smartt, and comes from the State Library of South Australia (SLSA B-29135). The old building was demolished in 1932 to realign McLaren Wharf and improve access to No. 1 Dock. The replacement SAHB building was built slightly further south, on the site of 4 McLaren Parade, behind the Exchange Hotel, in 1934. The SAHB vacated the building in 1978.
The buildings thought to have once stood at Hugh Quin's premises can be seen located between the SAHB building and the Exchange Hotel:
Interestingly, an Alexander Russell is said to have been the publican of the Exchange Hotel from 1864 to 1868.
The Exchange Hotel and the General Blanco Figurehead
William Russell's sailmaking business was, at one stage, held in a single-storey corrugated iron shed used as a workshop at 17 Commercial Road, Port Adelaide — the low building between the (then) Exchange Inn and the Lighthouse Hotel:
According to Les Jones on Facebook, William Russell Sailmakers was demolished along with the first Exchange Hotel to realign the wharves. The current Lighthouse Wharf Hotel (former Exchange) is built on the Russell Sailmakers' site. The building on the right became the Flagstaff Dining Rooms and other shops; when the third New Exchange (Hotel) was built on the site of the present Lighthouse Wharf Hotel, the old TB Oliver Hardware store — further east, on the second Exchange Hotel site — became today's Low and Slow.
This photo shows Russell's already demolished:
According to Les Jones, there have been three Exchange Hotels. This photo shows the General Blanco figurehead adorning the balcony of the first Exchange Hotel in 1857 (or '58):
According to the History SA collection record, the figurehead depicts a Scottish chieftain wielding a sword in his right hand and a shield in his left, clad in a tartan kilt with sporran and cape, silver armour, and a plumed helmet.
General Blanco was a three-masted teak ship of 985 tons built in 1844 in Quebec, Canada. It reportedly sailed under the British flag but arrived in Port Adelaide under the Portuguese flag in 1856, carrying tea and Chinese migrants intent on reaching the Victorian goldfields without paying the poll tax. Several weeks after arrival the vessel was fined for smuggling. It spent months anchored off a light ship at Port Adelaide before departing for Manila, was dismasted in gale-force winds just after dawn on 6 September, and was towed back into port. Unable or unwilling to pay the towage costs, the owners let the ship go; it was sold to Coleman & Wells, who used it as a lighter until it began to leak. After 1865 it was broken up for firewood. The figurehead stood on the Exchange Hotel balcony for many years, later moved to the hotel yard, and remained there until the South Australian Harbors Board demolished the building in 1935, when it was donated to the Port Adelaide Nautical Museum — the second figurehead in that collection.
The new Exchange (Hotel) was built on the corner in 1885 (or 1880):
… with the General Blanco figurehead visible on that balcony:
The figurehead is now part of a collection of seventeen ships' figureheads at the South Australian Maritime Museum in Lipson Street, Port Adelaide.
A Publican's Timeline
Les Jones supplied further detail on the Exchange Hotel's history. It opened in 1857 on the corner of McLaren Parade and Commercial Road, originally standing close to the Birkenhead ferry steps. Alexander Russell renewed the licence in 1866; Dunstan Vidal was landlord from 10 March 1868 (and, like many Port Adelaide publicans, occasionally found himself before the magistrate on trivial matters — in his case a chimney fire in September 1868, a case that was dismissed). J Coleman renewed the licence in 1870/72, MA McLeod was publican by 1882, and James Williams was landlord at the time of the hotel's main surviving photo, when the veranda and balcony were added in 1866.
James Williams had arrived from the UK in 1864, working as the Portland Estate Butcher before becoming landlord of the Old Exchange (later the Criterion and Port Admiral hotels); he died in October 1898, aged 54. George Read was publican from 1907 to 1913, when the Harbors Board took over all the wharves, beginning a period of major upheaval.
The underlying problem was a shortage of wharf space, with ships anchored awaiting their turn to dock. Until 1913 the wharves were privately owned and increasingly dilapidated; the government compulsorily acquired them, arguing that private owners benefited from wider, deeper channels dredged at taxpayers' expense (although the dredged silt was itself sold to council and private landowners to raise flood-prone land). McLaren Wharf, the oldest, was acquired by the Harbors Board, and the old ferry steps — where the Port Adelaide Lighthouse now stands, at the end of Commercial Road — were removed, though the ferry service itself continued until the Birkenhead Bridge opened in the late 1940s.
McLaren Parade was widened and realigned with Queens Wharf to accommodate two new transit sheds; Shed 1, built when the wharf was aligned with Queens Wharf, is now known as Fishermen's Wharf Market.
By publican Harry Coull's tenure in 1934, demolition orders had been served on the old Exchange Hotel and another ten properties around McLaren Parade, Russell and Todd streets. The demolition of William Russell's sailmaking and ships' chandlery shop, seen in the images above, was not related to the Russell family of publicans, as far as can be determined. William Russell died aged 82 in 1924, a much-respected Portonian who had arrived from the Orkney Islands in the 1850s.
Demolition was also ordered on three shops at the rear of the Exchange Hotel — formerly the site of the first Exchange, where the General Blanco figurehead first hung — comprising the Flagstaff Dining Rooms (which also operated as a boarding house) and J Harvey, a tobacconist and confectioner. The New Exchange Hotel (No. 3) was built about 20 metres east of the Old Exchange (No. 2), on the site of the original Exchange (No. 1), opening in 1935 in the Art Deco style. The Old Exchange (No. 2) was demolished in 1934 and its licence transferred to the new hotel at 1 Commercial Road, which later became the Lighthouse Inn as part of the 1986 Centenary, when the lighthouse itself was relocated from Neptune Island.
The fourth demolished shop was rebuilt and operated by trader TB Oliver, established in Port Adelaide in 1900. Known for 90 years as "Olivers Locksmiths and Hardware" near the wharf on Commercial Road, it expanded into hardware and locksmithing and is now Low & Slow American BBQ; the business changed its name to Port Locksmiths in 1990. A full list of publicans for the Lighthouse Wharf (Exchange) Hotel is available at beeradelaide.com.
The original old Exchange/Flagstaff Dining Rooms site became the third New Exchange Hotel, now the Lighthouse Wharf Hotel. Adjacent to it, TB Oliver Locksmiths opened in 1900; when it closed in the 1990s it moved into the Fishermen's Wharf Market and later became Low and Slow. The Lighthouse Wharf Hotel stands on the site of the third Exchange Hotel — not on the site of Russell's, which was separate, though close by.
17 Commercial Road
William Russell operated from the Commercial Road premises until his death on 1 August 1924, at the age of 82.
The business then passed to William Playfair, who died in April 1931. Gordon Donald Lucas Sr. took over the business following Playfair's death; Lucas had begun his apprenticeship under William Playfair in 1927 (trading as William Russell). Although the building still stands, its interior and façade have both undergone considerable alteration:
The two hotels and William Russell's shop all had to be relocated slightly east owing to the realignment of McLaren Wharf on the Port River. According to Mudflats to Metropolis by Brian Samuels, as reproduced in a Department of Marine & Harbors flyer, the 1920s saw a number of wharves built or reconstructed; as part of this, McLaren Wharf was brought into alignment with the other wharves on North Parade, requiring the wharf's alignment between Commercial Road and Lipson Street to be moved back by about 25 metres. As a result, several buildings — including the Harbors Board building and the Exchange Hotel — were demolished and replaced: the former by the building still bearing the inscription 'Harbors Board' over its entrance, the latter by the New Exchange Hotel.
This all followed the government's takeover of the privately-owned wharves under the Harbors Act of 1913, which also meant the demolition of William Russell's sailmaking building on Commercial Road. The Lighthouse Wharf Hotel is said to now stand on the former site of William Russell's premises.
William Russell's business, trading as William Russell Pty Ltd (under either William Playfair or Gordon Donald Lucas Sr.), was later held in a large, three-storey stone building at 217 St Vincent Street, Port Adelaide:
Hugh Quin Snr's grandson of the same name founded Quin's sailmaking and rigging business in 1924, becoming the founder of Quin Marine Pty Ltd. The company is now located at 331 St Vincent Street, Port Adelaide, having moved east from 77 St Vincent Street, where it traded from the mid-1970s. Quin Canvas Goods Pty Ltd, at 9 Todd Street, Port Adelaide, has been making shade sails since 1972.
Yachtsman and Scholar
William Russell was a co-founder of the South Australian Yacht Club in 1869 — today's Royal South Australian Yacht Squadron. He is said to have "started his own business in 1867, operating from a shop on the corner of Divett and Todd streets in Port Adelaide," before he and Henry William Thompson formed their partnership in 1871 when they "opened their own shop when they purchased Clarke, McKenzie & Co., their former employers." According to the signage above the door in an earlier photo, however, he is said to have started his sailmaking business in 1870; since Clarke, McKenzie & Co. were said to be ships' chandlers only prior to 1867, and the partnership formed in 1871 shifted the business toward chandlery, rigging and sail repair, the actual sailmaking trade had probably only begun by about 1870.
Hugh Quin (Snr), commodore in 1871–72, and Henry Way Rymill, commodore in 1950–54 and 1957–59 (along with Arthur Rymill, commodore 1923–31), have all served as commodores of the RSAYS. William Russell was a founder of the Squadron in its earlier form as the SA Yacht Club.
According to History SA, by the early 1880s Russell was also engaged in coastal trade, co-owning the ketches Young E.B., Crest of the Wave, Spindrift, Gambier Lass, Capella and Elizabeth Annie. Alongside his business interests, he was a keen supporter of the Port Adelaide Institute and Institutes' Association, sat on the board of the Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery, and was a member of the Port Corporation.
Russell's interest in mathematics and astronomy likely motivated him to become the first student to enrol at the University of Adelaide, on 21 March 1876. He studied for three years but did not complete a degree. At the time of his enrolment he was living on Lefevre Peninsula in the District of Glanville; he later moved his family to a home on Union Street, Semaphore.
William Russell's legacy in South Australia's maritime history is preserved through a collection of tools and equipment from his sailmakers' loft, dating from the early 1800s until 1985, including whale-bone rubbing tools, sailmaking tools and general shipping equipment. The collection represents one of Australia's oldest continuously operating sailmakers and ship chandlers, with tools and equipment passed down through generations, and stands as a testament to the skilled craftsmanship and maritime traditions integral to the working Port of Adelaide.
Ships Owned by William Russell
Of the ships owned, or once owned, by William Russell — ownership of vessels came and went regularly — the 64-ton ketch Elizabeth Annie was operating out of Port Adelaide in the 1890s and was wrecked at Minlacowie, on the Yorke Peninsula, on 16 December 1911. According to Ketches of South Australia by Ronald Parsons, W. Russell was part-owner of the Elizabeth Annie alongside D. Dineen and CE Hislop. A photo of the Elizabeth Annie in Company Basin, circa 1900s, can be found at photosofthepast.com.au.
Steve Reynolds previously wrote about the Elizabeth Annie in the MLSSA Newsletter for May 1999 (No. 255): "The Elizabeth Annie ran aground on 16th December 1911 and she became stranded close to the Port Minlacowie jetty. She was subsequently abandoned on 15th January 1912."
The 23-ton ketch Young E.B. was built at Port Adelaide in 1882 and wrecked at Marino Rocks on 30 July (or June) 1888 (ship owners came and went regularly). Steve Reynolds wrote more about the vessel in The Buck Family and the Ketch 'Young E.B.', noting that Robert (Buck) Snr's son William is said to have built the wooden ketch in Port Adelaide with a W. Russell in 1882. According to SA passenger records, the Young E.B. met its final demise on 30 July 1888, driven ashore near Marino Rocks, south of Port Adelaide, in a gale, breaking up before it could be saved; its Customs register was not closed until 1912. Both Shipwrecks of South Australia – Book Two, 1876–1899 and Ketches of South Australia, both by Ronald Parsons, give further detail, including tonnage, dimensions, design and the heavy north-west gale that drove the vessel onto the rocks; the small steamer Defiance went to its assistance but the ketch was already breaking up by the time it arrived.
A two-masted, 71-ton ketch called Spindrift was built in Tasmania in 1873 and wrecked at Port Lehunte/Point Sinclair on 25 May 1927. The wooden yacht Capella was wrecked at Wallaroo on 4 July 1896 after dragging its anchor in a storm.
According to "South Australian Shipwrecks – A Data Base 1802–1989" by Peter Christopher, the General Blanco — the ship whose figurehead later adorned the Exchange Hotel balcony — was wrecked at Troubridge Island on 3 September 1856 but was salvaged, with one casualty. Further detail can be found in Shipwrecks of South Australia (1836–1875) (Book 1) by Ronald Parsons, with the Capella covered in Book 2, 1876–1899.
Death and Legacy
According to family history records, William Russell (1842–1924) was 11 years old when he arrived in South Australia with his father, mother, brother and two sisters; his eldest brother and two elder sisters did not emigrate, with the older brother said to have gone to America.
The Chronicle of Saturday 9 August 1924 reported: "Mr. William Russell, the well-known sailmaker and ship chandler, of Port Adelaide, died at his residence at Union Street, Semaphore, on August 1 … He and Mr. John Playfair were the last two remaining foundation members of the Royal Yacht Squadron. He was associated for many years with the committee and as an officer of the club, and used to race his own yacht, Vivid … When the squadron was formed, on November 6, 1859, he was among those who met at Mr. Bucknall's Club House Hotel to bring about its inauguration."
Some of these details were gleaned from Walk Round Corners … Port Adelaide by John Couper-Smartt, which also provides details about William Russell and Russell Street, named in his honour, along with a photograph of Russell.
Russell Street, Port Adelaide, lies at the southern end of Commercial Road, running between Commercial Road and Lipson Street; the telephone exchange stands on the corner of Commercial Road and Russell Street.
Photographs by Steve Reynolds unless otherwise stated.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to John Couper-Smartt, Stan Quin, Les Jones, and Hayley Hunt & David Borg from the RSAYS, and anybody else who helped with the details above.