William Rendall Cave (17 June 1842 – 6 July 1916) was a grain merchant and shipowner in the early days of South Australia.
[1] He was a son of Charles Cave (died 1851) of Stoke-sub-Hamdon, South Somerset, and Susannah (1800 – 19 December 1862) who came to Adelaide in 1848 or 1849 and settled at Gumeracha.
Next the Chambers brothers gave him a job at their northernmost cattle property, Beltana Station, and he remained there for several years, becoming an expert bushman.
Early on he went to Port Adelaide and took up stevedoring work for William Younghusband, loading the Solway with the first full cargo of wheat from South Australia for London (perhaps in May 1862[3]), and the Thomas Brown for Acraman, Main, Lindsay, & Co.
But after six months on the wharfs he secured a position as overseer of "Thursk", a cattle station near Overland Corner belonging to John White, where he was associated with Sir Jenkin Coles.
W. R. Cave & Co. owned or chartered a large number of undistinguished coasting vessels, and from 1889 to 1893 shared a wharf with the Howard Smith Company.
[9] During the Boer War he was, with Sir Jenkin Coles and N. W. Stirling (1853–1916), involved in the selection and purchase of South Australian horses for the Bushmen's Corps and 4th Contingent in 1900.
(There is a family connection here – from 1848 to December 1850 his father, Charles Cave, was vice-chairman of the Adelaide branch of Imperial Fire Insurance Company.)