South Australia starts River Murray steamer era in 1853 with William Randell's tiny 'Mary Ann' and its big boiler
William Randell, in his eighties, with the fearsome boiler of the Mary Ann, the first steamboat on the River Murray in 1853.
Image courtesy RiverMurray.com.au
South Australia started the use of the River Murray and the Murray-Darling basin as a transport system for trade, with paddle steamers, in the early 1850s.
South Australian governor Henry Young decided, with the young colony struggling from the impact of gold rushes in Victoria and New South Wales in 1851, to secure a stake in the inland trade. He offered £4000 for the first two boat owners to navigate the Murray from its mouth to the Darling junction in iron-clad steamers of not less than 40 horsepower and drawing not more than 61cm of water when laden.
William Randell was a brave novice contender who took up Young's challenge. Randell, who came to South Australia from England as a 13 year old with his family in 1837, had got to know the lower end of the Murray River and experienced steam power at his father’s flour mill at Gumeracha in the Adelaide Hills.
Excited by stories of fortunes made by taking supplies to the goldfields, Randell and his brothers Thomas and Elliott began building a steamboat in 1852, even though none of them had seen a paddle steamer. They carefully selected timber around Gumeracha and prefabricated the boat’s hull that they carted by bullock wagon, in sections, 48 kilometres across the Adelaide Hills and the Murray flats to the riverbank, where they put it together, at Noa-No, a few kilometres upstream from the present town of Mannum.
The boat, named Mary-Ann after their mother, was powered by “a fearsome wood-burning engine of 8 horsepower” built by German engineer Claus Gehikin in Hindmarsh, Adelaide. Randell became the first to put a steamboat on the River Murray with a trial run of the Mary-Ann in 1853.
A remarkable and fearsoms feature of the Mary-Ann was the rectangular boiler with furnace through the middle. As it heated, the boiler expanded in a way that scared the Randall brothers. They were unable to contain "the concertina boiler" with bolts, chains and wedges. After it took part in the epic race with Francis Cadell's bigger paddle steamer Lady Augusta, the Mary-Ann was scrapped in 1854 and the hull reused as one half of the twin-illed Gemini. The boiler was ditched in the river and rescued 50 years later by engineer James Scott.
