Volume One - Into the Victorian Age - The graving dock and the growth of the coal trade . . .

	A view looking back through the graving dock entrance dating from probably the late 1860's or early 1870's. The logic being that trade was known to be slow in the early years ofter opening in 1865 and in this photo the dock has only about ten or twelve ships moored. Compare this image to the 1883 photo below!

A snippet from the Cardiff Times [019] taken from the Christmas Eve edition in 1881, recorded - “Penarth – Accident - A horse and cart belonging to Mr. Johns, grocer, etc., James-street, Bute Docks, was on Tuesday conveying goods on board the steamer Triton, lying under a tip in Penarth Basin. The horse and cart were left standing on the quay while the man in charge was carrying the goods on board, when the noise of the tip frightened the animal, which started at full gallop, and capsized into the basin and immediately sank. The horse was said to be worth £50. The horse and cart were subsequently raised by a diver going down and making fast a rope to the cart. The rope was attached to the steam winch on board the dredger and then hauled up on the quay by the steam crane."

	May 1883 – Wall to wall square riggers in the dock queuing to be loaded with coal. By 1883 the coal trade had developed so dramatically that delays at Penarth were becoming intolerable. The image bears testament to the situation which was in common with Cardiff and the other Welsh coal exporting ports.

Something had to be done about it; greater capacity was required. The Taff Vale directors had been warned by a deputation of coal-shippers and coal-owners almost a decade earlier that within a small radius of Penarth, 47 new collieries had, or were about to be, opened and that the present facilities to ship coal were hardly adequate and that they expected another half a million tons of coal to be shipped. This frustration of trade might well lead to the Barry docks, funded by the coal-owners i.e. the dreaded private enterprise initiative which could break the virtual Bute and Taff Vale monopoly!