The ketch Evaleeta was built at Port Cygnet in Tasmania in 1923 for Captain Spaulding of Hobart. She was later purchased by South Australian interests in 1932. She is seen here in the Port River. Evaleeta spent most of her time trading between Melbourne and Tasmanian ports, being only occasionally seen in South Australia.

Evaleeta was a well crafted vessel and sailed well. An auxiliary engine was installed several years after she was built. The ketch was sold to the American Army in 1942 and operated out of New Caledonia. Following the war she remained in that region, and sank at her moorings in Maryborough, Queensland in 1954.

Evaleeta was typical of the hundreds of small vessels which played an important role in the development of South Australia, providing a vital communication link for remote coastal communities and in carrying cargoes to and from them.

The majority of the small coastal traders, ketches and schooners, were built in Tasmania where there were ample supplies of suitable timber. These were then sailed from Tasmanian ports or transferred to the other colonies. Many of the ketches made open sea voyages between the colonies. By the 1950s most of the ketches had disappeared as road transport supplied the need they had served for so many years. When bulk handling of grains and ores came into use in the major South Australian ports in the late 1950s and 1960s, there was little trade left for the mosquito fleet.

Parsons, Ronald. Southern passages: a maritime history of South Australia Netley, S. Aust.: Wakefield Press, 1986
Gillespie, James, Captain. Traders under sail: the cutters, ketches and schooners of South Australia Largs Bay, S. Aust.: J. Gillespie, 1994
Parsons, Ronald. Ketches of South Australia: a record of small sailing ships on the coast of South Australia, 1836-1970 Murray Bridge, S. Aust.: Ronald Parsons, 2005

Bullers, Rick. Quality assured: shipbuilding in colonial South Australia and Tasmania [Bedford Park, S. Aust.]: Flinders University, Department of Archaeology, 2006