CJB666 wrote: Re: Billy - I thought this was jargon for an empty can in which to boil water over an open fire for a brew of tea. But also current in Australia. I read that if tea leaves were in short supply just boiling water within the tea-stained billy can would be enough to create a weak brew.

This isn't the issue I'm raising. Yes, this is what a billy is. Witness the use of the term in, for instance, "Waltzing Matilda."

But "Waltzing Matilda" was written in 1895, by which time the term was well-established. The Weller Brothers pulled out of Otago in 1841, only two years after the very first attested use of "billy"/"billycan."

It is almost certain that no one, in the Weller Brothers period, would have named a ship the "Billy of Tea," because the name wouldn't mean anything. Of course the ship's name could have changed in oral tradition, but its use in a song about the Wellers is an anachronism.