ProvenanceBought by the South Australian Maritime Museum from an auction of the Alan Rice Collection. This turkey plate was auctioned as a 19th Century object. Its crest show that it was made for use on the SS Emu.
The Emuwas brought to South Australia by Captain Hugh Quinn, Harbour Master of Port Adelaide. It was one of two ships he bought with partners to form the Euro Steamship Company in 1877. The ships traded to Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Wallaroo. It was an iron screw steamer with a capacity of 621 tons and licensed to carry 50 passengers. The ship was bought by the Spencer's Gulf Steamship Company in December 1881. The following year Adelaide Steamship Company purchased the whole fleet of Spencer's Gulf Steamship.
The Emu worked the route between Port Adelaide and Esperance carrying passengers and cargo. It carried silver and lead from the Broken Hill Mine to London. It carried wheat flour and chaff from Port Adelaide to Sydney and brought back coal from Newcastle. It also carried sugar from Queensland to Sydney. The ship was sold to owners in Noumea in 1902 and was eventually converted into a pontoon in 1924.SignificanceThis plate is significant as a record of the experience of passengers in coastal shipping. It records a ship that was closely associated with Port Adelaide in the last decades of the 19th Century and with South Australia's largest shipping company, Adelaide Steamship.DescriptionRounded oval flat platter. Blue on white glaze, blue rim. It is crested for SS EMU in black on white. The crest takes the form of a circular 'belt' with a fleur-de-lis buckle. It encircles a flag decorated with an image of an emu standing on one leg. The plate has a fleur-de-lis groove for gravy that drains into a gravy well. The underside of the platter has the number 7802 written in blue glaze.Creator (person)Creator (organisation)AcknowledgementDate of CreationDate of UsageMaterialCeramic - unspecified
|tin glaze DimensionType: blue board box
Height: 115
Width: 470
Depth: 545
Unit (Lengths): mm Accession NumberHT 2007.0668
