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

After twenty minutes waiting by the lever in the noisy engine room the bell rang. Sadly I had forgotten the sequence so altered the lever as I saw fit. A longer period of silence so thought we must be on the berth and went on deck to see. Disaster, we had overshot the berth and gone into some yachts. I quickly went back down the engine room to keep out of the skipper's way!"

Thank you Chris for an enlightening description of working the Bristol Channel and Severn Sea for the company of John Harker Limited. After some research, I established that the Angle-American Oil Co. and National Benzole operated separate depots at the site from the 1930's, although when this ceased is unclear.

Another lovely story, but this time, about loading coal at Newport in the early 1930's. I recall it from the book "The Last of the Sailing Coasters" by Edmund Eglington published in 1982. [172] Edmund sailed on many schooners and ketches in the Bristol Channel and was born near the sea in Somerset:

"I well remember the occasion we loaded the little 'Lilly' with coal from the jetties in Newport river for a merchant in Lynmouth. The 'Lily' only held six 10 ton trucks, but she was a handy size for trade with the smaller merchants whose yard and purse could only accommodate small cargoes. We had just put the hatches on and battened the little vessel down when a photographer appeared on the jetty asking if he could come aboard and take some photographs of the vessel - and the crew of course. I believe the charge was three shillings (15p) for six postcard-sized pictures. We agreed that if he would wait for the two of us to have a wash we would order six.

I must explain here what happens when a vessel loads coal under a tip, especially if the tide is low and the ship's hatchway 15 or more feet below the mouth of the shute. A truck of coal is upended and tipped down the shute and when it hits the bottom of the hold of the vessel, an enormous cloud of dust billows up leaving a mantle of fine black powder over everything; for a few moments one cannot see a thing, and hardly dares to breathe. A few of those trucks of very dry coal and men looked like golliwogs with powered eyebrows.

We quickly had a wash and smeared some butter into our eyelids - no amount of washing ever seemed to remove the dust from the base of one's eyelids, only butter or margarine would accomplish that. Then we put on our Appledore jerseys and were ready to pose.