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

"I examined into the question which has been mooted, viz., as to the preferable site for the new port - the Cardiff Moors to the East, or the Cogan Pil to the west of the estuaries formed by the rivers Taff and Ely. I therefore made numerous enquiries and consulted various plans, and closely examined the locality.

The opinion I arrived at was totally unbiased and disinterested, for, as the whole of both sites was shown to me as the property of the Marquess or such as an Act of Parliament would give him power over. I naturally considered it quite a matter of indifference which site might be adopted. And even though his Lordship, from a kindly feeling towards the town of Cardiff, had got his Engineer to draw up a plan for the East side, I could easily infer that, from the representations which others had made, he was somewhat inclined to regard the Ely as the most eligible place.

On going to Cogan Pil, I saw at once that it was no place of refuge for a vessel of any magnitude to run for in bad weather, as had erroneously represented to me . . . . . the first and principal reason of my rejecting it was its unfitness for the commerce of the county. [126]

He detailed the reasons for his conclusion : the difficulty of access and egress of vessels during S.SE and N.NE winds, the tortuousness of the channel for night navigation, the presence of shoals at the mouth of the Ely and the set of the stream across the fairway.

The control of the Canal Company over the transport to and shipping at Cardiff had been broken by the railway and Bute's dock. Although these two had broken the monopoly their actions wore not complementary which would have been the sensible action. The seeds of coming dissension had been sown, for the T.V.R. and Lord Bute were later to disagree.

Soon after obtaining the 1835 Merthyr Tydvil and Cardiff Railway Act the T.V.R. directors entered into negotiations with the Bute interests about the terms for access to Bute's new dock. The marquess's policy was to persuade the T.V.R. to use his dock, because he saw his minerals and dock as an integrated unity, and wanted all exports to go through Cardiff. They disagreed and Capt Smyth's explanation was : -