A. D. Edwardes

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Arthur Diedrich Edwardes (1905–1970), better known as A. D. Edwardes, was a teacher in South Australia and the Northern Territory who loved sailing ships, especially grain-trade ships. He took photographs and wrote about ships, and with help from his brother Allan and others he built what is now known as the A. D. Edwardes Collection of photographs. When he died, he left about 8,000 images to the State Library of South Australia. Three of his photos are also in the Port Victoria Collection.

Arthur was born on 24 May 1905, the eldest of eight children. His father, Henry Edwardes, was a bank manager who later ran a rural business. The family called him “Bon.” He grew up in Port Victoria, a small port town on Spencer Gulf that was part of the grain trade that used sailing ships. The port saw many famous ships and crews from Europe and other places. It was a shallow port that needed a long jetty to help transfer grain from smaller ships to larger ones.

Edwardes contributed to his community in Port Victoria, helping with football and local theatre. He wanted to join the Royal Australian Navy but was rejected because of poor eyesight. He left Port Victoria in mid-1927 to attend the Education Department’s Training College.

His sister Meme Gwenyth (Gwenyth) later became known for sailing Cape Horn aboard L’Avenir in 1937. His brother Allan stayed in the district, becoming Port Victoria’s harbourmaster from 1946 to 1952 and later the Tumby Bay harbourmaster from 1963.

In 1949, the ships Pamir and Passat began from Port Victoria for Europe, carrying grain and making the last commercial sailing voyage by ships without engines. Passat overtook Pamir on the way to Cape Horn.

Edwardes had a long teaching career. He taught at Keith in 1928, then became head teacher at Wardang Island (near Port Victoria) in August 1928, Cockburn in 1930, Mitcham in 1932, Tennant Creek from 1936 to 1941, and Challa Gardens in December 1941. By 1943 he was living at Glenunga, a suburb of Adelaide, and he remained there at least until 1952. Although he spent much of his adult life away from Port Victoria, he kept strong family ties to the area and visited often. In early 1954 he was living in Port Victoria again, possibly retired.

Edwardes shared a lifelong interest in shipping with his brother Allan. He began collecting photographs as a teenager and learned photography so he could print and swap images with other nautical enthusiasts. By 1925 he was exchanging letters and photographs with people all over the world, including the poet John Masefield and the composer Percy Grainger. Grainger visited Port Victoria in 1934 aboard L’Avenir and was photographed climbing its rigging. In 1932 Edwardes received an autographed photo of the WWI German raider Seeadler from its commander, Count Felix von Luckner.

In the 1930s Edwardes wrote articles for newspapers about ships, including wrecks near Port Willunga and Wardang Island, and the end of the era of full-rigged ships. Many articles appeared in The Chronicle (Adelaide). In 1933, four of his photographs of grain-race ships at Port Victoria were published. He also took part in other activities: in 1947 he competed in a radio quiz, and in 1950 he helped curate the Port Adelaide Nautical Museum.

In 1963, after a period of illness, Edwardes decided to leave his photo collection to the State Library of South Australia. He recovered briefly and spent the next five years organizing the collection with the help of library staff.

He married Rena Clavering Tuckwell in January 1932. Rena came from Dunedin, New Zealand, and later lived in Melbourne. She had been the principal of the Rena Clavering School of Physical Culture in Dunedin. They had a daughter, Lynette, and two sons. Edwardes died on 24 September 1970 and is buried at Centennial Park Cemetery. He is remembered with a stone tablet at his parents’ grave in Port Victoria Cemetery.

Legacy
The A. D. Edwardes Collection is held by the State Library of South Australia. It includes about 91 volumes of photographs organized by ship type or ownership, with basic captions. The collection contains around 8,000 images, most copies rather than originals, and many were from before Edwardes’s time. The photos mainly show iron and steel sailing ships linked to the grain trade, and depict ships and ports in South Australia (Port Victoria, Port Adelaide, Wallaroo, Victor Harbor, Port Augusta, Port Lincoln), other Australian ports (Melbourne, Sydney), and many overseas ports. Three Edwardes photographs are in the Port Victoria Collection. He helped contribute to what is now the Port Victoria Maritime Museum, and his photos were used in the 1975 book Sail in the South, which includes a photo of him. Today only a few of the ships from his era survive afloat, including Passat, Pommern, Viking, Moshulu, and Glenlee; Cutty Sark is now landlocked in Greenwich, and Falls of Clyde was scuttled at sea in October 2025. Edwardes also helped document shipwrecks around Wardang Island, now a popular diving site. A road near Port Victoria is named Edwardes Terrace in honor of the Edwardes family.