‘Currency Lass’, 1851

The ‘Currency Lass’ was a 12-metre, 21-ton wooden ketch. She had been built on the Brisbane Waters in 1842 as a 16-ton cutter, but was altered in 1847. She was wrecked when she was driven from her moorings and was washed ashore on Ulladulla Beach on 15th June 1851.

(Currency lads and lasses were the first generations of native-born white Australians. They were the children of the British settlers and convicts who arrived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, beginning with the First Fleet in 1788. Native-born colonials came to be known as "currency", in contrast to British-born "sterling". The term originally had derogatory connotations, but it was soon reclaimed by the native-born as a positive term, in order to distinguish themselves from more recent arrivals. ‘Currency Lass’ was therefore an appropriate name for a vessel built on the Brisbane Waters in 1842.)