Robert Barr Smith and Thomas Elder help start Adelaide Steamship: a national passenger and goods shipping giant

One of Adelaide Steamship's fleet of coastal vessels, the Moonta, with one of its tugboats, the Lydia.

Adelaide Steamship Company – a national shipping giant –  was started by a group of South Australian businessmen, including Andrew Tennant, Robert Barr Smith and Thomas Elders of Elder Smith & Co. in 1875. Its aim was to control the goods transport between Adelaide and Melbourne and profit from the need for an efficient comfortable passenger service. 

Adelaide Steamship amalgamated with Spencer's Gulf Steamship Co Ltd in 1882 to form a fleet that circled the coast from Derbyin  northern Western Australia to Cairns in Queensland. Shipping operations were supported by a large network of agency offices in almost every major Australian port.

By the start of World War II, the company owned 30 ships. As with World War I, the company was again forced to surrender nine ships to the navy, including the Manoora and Manunda which became an armed merchant cruiser and a hospital ship. 

During the 1940s and after the war, a decline in trade forced the company to diversify into towage and shipbuilding, and carrying salt, coal and sugar.

Adelaide Steamship’s interstate fleet was merged in 1964 with McIlwraith McEacharn in a new company, Associated Steamships, with Adelaide Steamship holding 40%. The merged company developed the world's first purpose-built container ship MV Kooringa. 

Bulkships Ltd, 40% owned by Adelaide Steamship, acquired all shares in Associated Steamships in 1968. In 1977, the company's interest in Bulkships was sold and Adelaide Steamship Company ended its link with ships. But the company kept its interests in tug boat operations and, by the late 1980s, Adelaide Steamship was one of Australia’s oldest surviving industrial companies.