Volume Eight - Pre-Victorian to the present day - more aspects - Mr Martin's Recollections of Penarth Dock . . .

He qualified this statement by saying that when you think that the big steamers take on 6,000 or 6,500 tons of coal, they would swing about outside the dock with the aid of two or more tugs, and enter stern first. Smaller vessels, of say, 3,000 or 4,000 tons capacity would, however, swing in the dock. 'How the devil are they going to swing around if the dock is full of ships? They couldn't swing round if you could walk from side to side'.

A section of the GWR plan of Penarth Dock from the early 1920's.

Harry said that of course, ships had to get right to the top of the dock, to tips numbers 13 or 14, and manoeuvre on and off the pontoon. And you know there was no room for a ship to swing around because the dock tapered and got narrower at this end.

One of his favourite places was the old harbour where there may one of the coastal tankers, such as the 'Tigoa', discharging petrol, petroleum products mostly. The wharf was owned by R.O.P. - Russian Petroleum Products. Harry recounts that during the depression of the 1920's he helped to build 'the damned place with the Russians'. Prior to that it was the Anglo-American Oil Company. 'It's all gone now, demolished, tips gone, nothing there now, dreadful, isn't it?'

The railway boats, which were very smart, came to the pontoon for repair. These ships carried cargo and passengers from Fishguard to Rosslare and ran the routes from Weymouth to the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey. The ships of Foster-Hynes used to come to the pontoon - perhaps a new propeller had shifted or could be in for some engine repairs. There was always work to do when a ship is on the pontoon having their bottom's scraped and painted - a big job indeed!