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

• 25th June 1878 - The Cefn-y-Wrach Shoal - The Correspondence with the Board of Trade - 'The official correspondence having reference to the dispute between the Cardiff pilots and the Pilotage Board was on Monday issued in the form of a Parliamentary paper. After setting out Mr. Plimsoll's letter to the Board of Trade, which accompanied the memorial of the pilots, a copy of which has already been published in the Western Mail, it proceeds to give the subsequent correspondence between the Board of Trade and the Cardiff Pilotage Board, as follows : -

BOARD OF TRADE TO CARDIFF PILOTAGE BOARD. - Mr. C. Cecil Trevor, on behalf of the Board of Trade, writes, under date April 9 : - "I am directed by the Board of Trade to transmit to you, for the information of the Pilotage Board of the port of Cardiff, copy of a petition addressed to the President by certain pilots of the port of Cardiff, and I am to request that this Board may be favoured with any observations thereon which the Pilotage Board may desire to offer.

CARDIFF PILOTAGE BOARD TO BOARD OF TRADE. - In reply, Dr. Taylor, as chairman of the Cardiff Pilotage Board, writes on April 20 : - "I have to request that you will lay before the Board of Trade (Harbour Department) the following observations upon the memorial of the Cardiff pilots, which has been duly considered at a special meeting of the Cardiff Pilotage Board held on the 16th inst., at which eight members were present. In the case of John Howe, pilot 40, the facts are these : - On the 18th of March last Howe attended a special meeting of the board, at which six members were present, when the following complaint against Howe was made by Mr. Capper, a shipowner of the port : -

"For refusing to take the steamship Royal Minstrel to sea on the night of Monday, the 18th March, she drawing 19 feet 8 inches, and there being 24 feet 9 inches over the Roath Dock cill.

"Mr. Capper attended and complained of his steamer having been neaped three days in consequence of the pilot's refusal. It appeared have to been a moonlight night and very calm. After due consideration the Pilotage Board resolved to suspend Howe for 12 months. It may be observed that the pilot's memorial has reference to the depth of water at the highest point of the Cefn-y-Wrach shoal, and omits all reference to the channel through the Cefn-y-Wrach, which is the ordinary course of navigation, the fact being that at the time of Howe's refusal to take out the steamship there was a depth of water of 25 feet in the Cefn-y-Wrach channel.