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

Baroness Windsor and the Hon. Robert Clive closed the dock gates by operating the levers and the crowd flocked across and dispersed on each side of the dock. It was then that Baroness Windsor renamed the lifeboat 'George Gay' 'Harriet' which was her name. From 1861 to 1865 it was named 'George Gay'.

After the official opening of the dock took place a banquet was held near the dock entrance in a large marquee. The chairman of the Penarth Dock Company, Crawshay Bailey, was absent because his son-in-law had died, so W. S. Cartwright took the chair, and he said in his speech that the "Penarth Dock would be shortly leased to the T.V.R. Company." The T.V.R. Company had leased the dock for 999 years.

Mr James Poole, chairman of the Taff Vale Railway Company said that he had been a director since 1840. In his speech he expressed gratitude to the late R. Henry Clive for withdrawing his law-suit commenced in late 1842 to force the T.V.R. to make the Ely Branch or pay him £56,000 less what had been expended.

This part of his speech was : - [156] [16th June 1865]

"It is a most curious coincidence that in the year 1836 when the Act was passed for the construction of the Taff Vale Railway there was coupled with that an obligation to make a tidal harbour in the Ely River and they were bound to pay a penalty of £50,000 to £60,000 if they failed to carry out that obligation.

The company had at the time to get through great pecuniary difficulties ; their railway was unfinished, their capital expended ; their credit exhausted, and they had no one to look to but themselves. They went to Parliament in the interim for an increase in their capital and they succeeded . . . but before doing so, when under great pecuniary difficulties they made an arrangement with Lord Bute to whom they were under great obligations, with respect to the shipments of coal in the West Dock.

When the Bill was obtained in 1836 it was doubtful whether any great results would follow, and Mr. Clive, with the noble generosity peculiar to his character, allowed them to abandon the undertaking of constructing a tidal harbour at the mouth of the River Ely.