Illawarra & South Coast Steam Navigation Company:
Formed in 1858, the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company (as it was then known) was established through the amalgamation of the General Steam Navigation Company, the Kiama Steam Navigation Company and the Shoalhaven Steam Navigation Company. The new enterprise quickly gained a near monopoly on the region's coastal shipping trade, their fleet stopping at every important port between Sydney and the Victorian border right up until the 1950s.
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By 1873, weekly services were running to south coast ports between Sydney and Eden, delivering supplies and collecting local exports for sale on the metropolitan market. Cargo included whale oil and bone, fish and other seafood products, timber, railway sleepers and tan bark, and farm produce such as butter and cheese, maize and potatoes, and livestock including beef cattle and sheep.
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However, it was the countless thousands of pigs shipped from the various ports, combined with the steamer's tradition of sounding their sirens to announce their impending arrival or departure that earned the company their nickname of the "Pig and Whistle Line" - it was even claimed that while the ships would wait an hour for a pig, they wouldn't wait a minute for a passenger. Although the pigs were often a source of complaint by passengers travelling on the Illawarra company vessels, few were complaining in 1897 when the SS Kameruka ran aground. It was thanks to a pig thrown overboard to swim ashore with a lifeline that the 48 passengers and crew to safely reach land with no fatalities.
In 1904, the company was incorporated as Illawarra and South Coast Steam Navigation Company (I & SCSN Co.) and by 1905, was providing the regular steam communication linking the south coast with Sydney, Launceston and Hobart in Tasmania, and New Zealand.
Over the years, more than twenty steamships made up the company fleet, many of which were purpose-built at ship yards both within Australia and overseas. However, by the 1920s road transport was on the rise and when the company's SS Merimbula ran aground on Beecroft Head in 1928, it was decided not to replace her. This brought to a close passenger shipping services on the south coast, the company then focusing solely on cargo instead.
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​It continued to operate successfully until after WWII, by which time competition from rail and road transport was having a major impact. Combined with other factors such as waterfront disputes, rising expenses and the cost of post-war ship building, the Illawarra and South Coast Steam Navigation Company entered into voluntary liquidation in 1950 and in 1955 was de-listed from the Australian Stock Exchange. Its last vessel was sold in 1959.