Volume Nine - Pre-Victorian to the present day - even more aspects - Cefn-y-Wrâch . . .

Hansard, [931] the record of Parliamentary affairs, states that during the Commons Sitting of the 29th March 1878, Mr. Samuel Plimsoll raised the matter the Cefn-y-wrach shoal:

• Mr. Plimsoll asked the President of the Board of Trade, If his attention has been drawn to the Memorial signed by more than fifty pilots of Cardiff, which states that the Cefn-y-wrach shoal at the entrance of the port of Cardiff constitutes a danger to ships of large burden leaving or entering the port, many vessels having grounded since the channel originally cut through the shoal has become useless, in consequence of its having silted up in at least three places; and, whether, under these circumstances, he will comply with the prayer of the Memorial, praying that he would send down a surveyor to examine and report upon the state of the shoal?

• Mr. E. Stanhope Sir, my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has received, both from some Cardiff pilots and also from certain shipowners and shipbrokers at Cardiff, a request to send a competent surveyor to examine the Cefn-y-wrach shoal at the mouth of the Taff. It appears that the Bute Trustees, who originally cut the channel through the shoal, have given orders that the obstructions which have grown up in it should be forthwith removed by their engineer; and, therefore, until the result of the proposed operations of the Trustees is known, my right hon. Friend proposes to defer further consideration of the representations of the pilots and ship-owners.

Also a mention of the infamous shoal within the 1840 publication Nautical Observations on the Port and Maritime Vicinity of Cardiff : [126]

'But the steep and hard clay bank which runs out from the Grange Point to the Cwtsh-y-cwm Reach, where the channel at low water is remarkably narrow ; and the two shoals at the Ely-ooze, called the Cefn-y-Wrâch, and the Patch, are serious obstacles to such a movement on a falling tide. The Cefn-y-Wrâch is a gravelly bank on marl, 44 feet from Penarth Point, at low water; and when it is on a wash, there are 3½ feet water at the entrance of the Bute Docks. The Patch is opposite to Penarth House, 74 feet from the beach; and when it is on a wash, there are 51 feet water at the Bute Dock Sill, whence it is plain that it is two feet higher than the Cefn-y-Wrâch'. . . . .