Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Defence of the Realm - Penarth Head Fort and Coastal Battery . . .

1898 - The Safest Place in Case of War - A Welshman's Plan of Campaign - Criticism of Coast Defences - . . . . Now, Cardiff and Penarth are defenseless, not- withstanding the fact that the ex-Chief Constructor of the Navy was for a long time the Parliamentary representative of the Welsh Metropolis. Assuming the torpedo-boats on this side were not ready for action, the French fleet might get into the Bristol Channel.

A 12-inch rifle on board a French warship, is 38 feet long. with four feet external diameter at the breech, and weighs 48 tons. Its 850-pound shot, driven by a 430lb. charge of brown prismatic powder, leaves the muzzle with a velocity exceeding 1,400 miles an hour, and would reach a target at its effective range of 5½ miles in 24 seconds. At a range of a mile and a half this shot would perforate 19 inches of solid steel!

If the Dowlais Company have time (and the contract) to make a steel wall, just 20 inches thick, around Cardiff, the town is safe, — but not otherwise. The details of the coast defences, and the advisability of corrugated iron roofing, or best pavement glass, as a protection overhead, I leave to those who are more deeply versed in such matters. Colliers invariably admire a "good top," but they do not need the strengthening of the coast fortifications, for they have the Garth Mountain, Penrhys, Llanwonno, and Penpych to protect them, with the fiery mines of the Rhondda as magazines in which to keep their powder dry.

But, if the war should happen to be forced upon us, and Cardiff fell — what then? Well, the Frenchmen would start up the Taff Valley, using their small boats on the river as the British soldiers did in passing passing up the Nile. There are weirs and water acts to contend with, at Llandaff, Green Meadow, and other places, which might certainly be surmounted (as the Nile expeditions), until Treforest was reached. Here is a second Niagara fall, with a perpendicular precipice over which a mighty volume of water comes pelting down, forming whirling, swirling pools which eddy and plough and hiss and roar in imitation of the natural antics of the only original Yankee giant waterfall.

It cannot be leaped, and it cannot be engineered. They could not even get around it, for the Tinworks feeder acts as a moat on one side, where Major Quin, M.P. (at the invitation of Alderman Walter Morgan) would lead the defence, while on the opposite shore is stationed Sergeant Stibbs. Pontypridd is, therefore, safe, even if the French penetrated to Treforest. . . . -  Pontypridd Chronicle and Workman's News [1138] [361] 28th October 1898.