Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - A History of Penarth Dock by Roy Thorne . . .

CHAPTER TWO : Events leading to the building of the Ely Harbour and Penarth Dock.

The inadequacy of the canal to cope with the increasing export trade and the resulting slowness was an irritation to the ironmasters.

The canal was insufficient for the traffic, and it was subject to delays ; a reduction in water meant barges had to carry less cargo ; groups of locks held up barges as their numbers increased ; the transferring of cargoes from tramroads at Navigation (Abercynon) was costly, and so was the cost of lightering the iron from barge to vessel.

The site of the canal sea lock was on a level with the water at half tide, so water could be lost from the lock. Ships had to wait a long time for tide to enter the sea lock pond. They might have had to wait three days for nine feet of water, and five to six days for fourteen feet of water. Spring tides helped the largest vessels to use the lock, but they often had to be loaded or unloaded by lighter near Penarth Head.

The ironmasters had been concerned about the cost and slowness along the canal from Merthyr and they had considered building a railway in the 1790's and 1820's, but this was not proceeded with when the canal company agreed to the construction of the canal from Merthyr to Abercynon. Many smaller tramroads were built in South Wales, but the first attempt to establish a regular railway was the origin of the Taff Vale Railway. The T.V.R. lines were made because the Glamorganshire Canal was not coping with the trade.

The coal freighters, too, were developing their export trade from Cardiff, and Thomas Powell, who had built his coal tip at 'The Bank', here the canal and Taff were nearest to one another near the sea, claimed credit for projecting the T.V.R. Powell had made chutes for loading previously at Newport.

A meeting was held at Merthyr in 1835 under the chairmanship of John Josiah Guest, M.P., and as a result it was decided to form a company and to promote a Bill for the construction of a railway from Merthyr to Cardiff. A year previously Anthony Hill of Plymouth Ironworks had consulted Isambard Brunel on the feasibility of building a railway to carry iron to the seaboard, but not coal.