Volume Four - An Era of Change, Uncertainty, Depression & War - Some thoughts regarding the apparent reluctance of Pounds to remove the pontoon . . .

At Lundy Island we have the confluence of waters from the Channel, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Rounding Land’s End, we sail up and through the English Channel; that being the busiest shipping lane in the World at that time! We may all imagine the problems that might ensue if a vessel some 380 feet (116m) long sank en-route under towage in shallow waters or at sea in deep water, or indeed what H.M. Navy might say if it were to sink at the entrance to Portsmouth harbour! The marine insurance inspector probably didn’t even bother to take his hammer out of his pocket to chip away at the rust to establish the pontoon’s diminished hull plate thickness and judge its sea worthiness; he would have been more concerned about the potential consequential losses, the lives of the tug crews and his pension!

Above is a tide prediction chart for Cardiff in December 2013. On Wednesday 4th we have two tides of 12.8 m or 42 feet! [104]

The obvious answer was to break up the pontoon en-situ; not an easy task since you tend to get your feet wet! So why not just lift it out onto the dockside and break it up? Whilst there were dockside cranes the limited capacity of these would be unsuitable for lifting the pontoon piecemeal.