Volume Six - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - Select Aspects - Working the Ely Tidal Harbour . . .

The following accounts are from a gentleman who experienced the oil wharf at the river Ely terminal in the course of his duties in the 1960's. His name is Chris Witts and he has a great website at www.severntales.co.uk which is well worth a good look around. He recounts that:-

"The Experience of a Fourth Hand with Harker's - One other unpleasant berth was National Benzole at the top of the River Ely at Cardiff. We would motor up the narrow and twisting river on the flood tide, turn the barge around and drop onto the jetty. Adjacent to National Benzole was a horrible, stinking tannery factory with a disgusting yellow substance running down the bank. Not many of us ventured ashore at this berth. Normally the barge could be discharged and run back down the river on the ebb. On one trip to this berth we arrived later than usual and did not swing around. After discharging the skipper decided to risk going back down the river stern first. The water in the river was dropping out fast, leaving us very little room to manoeuvre. With still quite a way to go we got stuck across the river with the threat of breaking our back. Luck was with us that day. We managed to slip back into the channel with only minutes to spare!"

I informed Chris of the local piggery - could it be origin of the yellow slime? Chris commented: "I don't know if National Benzole and Esso were related but am sure we carried for NB on the trips up to that grotty berth. I can remember one day a young lady employee sat on the bank amongst that yellow slime! The smell was horrible." I'm tempted to say maybe she should bath more often, but I wouldn't dare be so crude!

Then on another occassion:- "After working on the WYESDALE H we transferred as a crew to another Harker tanker barge, the ROSEDALE H. The ROSEDALE H had been brought around from the Mersey to make up numbers for the Severn fleet and was a ugly looking vessel with water wing tanks. But my skipper George Thompson said she fast as she had a new type of propeller fitted, a variable pitch one, the first in the fleet. George had a reputation for going full ahead and full astern and on the first trip with the ROSEDALE H the mechanism failed. Thus on our first trip up the River Ely with her, the skipper told me to go down the engine room and get to the end of the propeller shaft where there was a small lever which manually controlled the pitch of the propeller. Before I went down he told me a sequence of bell rings he would give me to alter the pitch. . .