The Big “Illawarra.”
In 1881, Devitt & Moore launched out with a real big ship, the Illawarra, and put her into the Sydney trade. She was not so fine lined as the earlier iron clippers, for the competition of steam and reduced freights were making good carrying capacity a necessity for a money-making ship. Nevertheless Illawarra had a very fair turn of speed, and her average of passages both outward and homeward was under 90 days.
She will be chiefly remembered as a cadet ship under the Brassey scheme; she succeeded the Hesperus, and under Captain Maitland carried premium cadets from 1899 to 1907. In that year Devitt & Moore made a contract to take 100 Warspite boys round the world, and as they did not consider the Illawarra large enough, they sold her to the Norwegians and bought the Port Jackson.
The Norwegians abandoned the old Illawarra in the North Atlantic during March, 1912, when she was on a passage from Leith to Valparaiso, her crew being taken off by the British steamer Bengore Head.