Name W. Cave | Died July 6, 1916 | |
William Rendall Cave (17 June 1842 – 6 July 1916) was a grain merchant and shipowner in the early days of South Australia.
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He was a son of Charles Cave (died 1851) of Stoke-sub-Hamdon, South Somerset, and Susannah (1800 – 19 December 1862) who came to Adelaide in 1848 or 1849 and settled at Gumeracha. William found employment with John McKinlay at his cattle station at Lake Victoria, New South Wales. Next the Chambers brothers gave him a job at their northernmost cattle property, Beltana Station, and he remained there for several years, becoming an expert bushman.
He broke in most of the horses used by John McDouall Stuart's 1861 expedition across the continent to Port Darwin. He and John Chambers shod all their horses, and Cave made duplicate sets of horseshoes, possibly at Chambers' Bobmoonie Station where the explorers made their final base before pushing into the unknown. Despite his peripheral association with the Stuart expedition, he was prominent in the many jubilees held between 1883 and 1914.
Early on he went to Port Adelaide and took up stevedoring work for William Younghusband, loading the Solway with the first full cargo of wheat from South Australia for London (perhaps in May 1862), and the Thomas Brown for Acraman, Main, Lindsay, & Co. But after six months on the wharfs he secured a position as overseer of "Thursk", a cattle station near Overland Corner belonging to John White, where he was associated with Sir Jenkin Coles.
In business
After a year at "Thursk" he returned to the Port, working as a shipping and customs clerk with his brother-in-law, James Rawlings (1820 – 27 January 1896). From July 1867 they were trading as Rawlings & Cave, general shipping merchants.
In September 1873 Rawlings left the business, which continued to trade under that name until July 1874, but in October 1873 Cave founded W. R. Cave & Co., with offices at Port Adelaide and Grenfell Street, Adelaide. The business steadily expanded especially in the grain trade, with agencies throughout South Australia and branches in the other States. His partners were his son, John R. Cave, his nephew, Charles H. Warren and for a time Frederick Charles Howard. They became South Australian agents for Howard Smith and Co from ?? to 1893 and McIlwraith, McEacharn & Co Around 1914 the city offices moved to Flinders Street. Rawlings went on to found the very successful shipping agents J. Rawlings & Son.
Shipping
W. R. Cave & Co. owned or chartered a large number of undistinguished coasting vessels, and from 1889 to 1893 shared a wharf with the Howard Smith Company. Three vessels made the news: Gwydir, Ellen, and Simplon.
On 18 June 1901 the barge Gwydir sunk with the loss of three seamen while being towed, lightly loaded with wheat, from Port Pirie to Port Adelaide by the tug Eleanor. Both Gwydir and Eleanor belonged to W. R. Cave & Co., so William absented himself from the Board for its hearings. The Court of Enquiry found Captain William Tulloch of the Eleanor not guilty of neglect. Cave was criticised under parliamentary privilege, to which answered in the newspapers.
The Ellen (also known as the SS Ellen) was a coastal freighter and trawler, which was wrecked in Gulf St Vincent at Morgan's Beach near Cape Jervis South Australia on Saturday, 12 December 1908.
He imported the trawler Simplon from England in 1909 with the intention of starting a trawl fishing industry in South Australian waters. In 1914 he lent her to the South Australian government for the relief of people suffering the effects of the economic depression which was underway at the time.
Other activities
During the Boer War he was, with Sir Jenkin Coles and N. W. Stirling (1853–1916), involved in the selection and purchase of South Australian horses for the Bushmen's Corps and 4th Contingent in 1900. and with William Robertson. for the Fifth Contingent of 1901.
He discovered several fossils on the banks of the Warburton River, which he presented to the Port Adelaide Museum.
He was appointed a governor of St Peter's College in 1888.
He was a warden of the Marine Board from 1896 to 1901.
He was for many years a director of various marine insurance companies: Commercial Marine Insurance Company Pty., South British Fire and Marine Insurance Company of New Zealand and Imperial Fire Insurance Company, including periods as Chairman and Vice Chairman. (There is a family connection here – from 1848 to December 1850 his father, Charles Cave, was vice-chairman of the Adelaide branch of Imperial Fire Insurance Company.)
He was appointed South Australian Consul for Chile (or "Chili" as it was then spelled) from 1903 to 1916.
It is also possible that he was a composer, as sheet music by a composer called W. R. Cave was published early in the 20th century. The National Library of Australia identifies the composer as William Rendell Cave (spelling the middle name's second vowel as an "e" rather than "a"). (Due to a typing error in this library entry, the reference to his death year is inconclusive (given as "191").)
Family
William had a brother and six sisters who migrated to South Australia:
He married Barbara Grierson (1849 – 12 December 1896), daughter of Captain Thomas Grierson, on 18 April 1867. They had a residence at Woodville, then Semaphore from around 1874 to 1890, then 191 Brougham Place, North Adelaide. From 1884 they also had a summer residence "Pomona" at Mt. Lofty.