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

	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!

1870 - Movement for a Graving Dock at Penarth - The shareholders of the Penarth Harbour Dock and Railway Company, at their half-yearly meeting, held last week, wished to know what the directors were doing with regard to a graving dock, the want of which was a serious obstacle to the success of the undertaking. The chairman agreed with the remarks made as to the importance of a graving dock at Penarth ; but that propriety could not undertake the work, as the works had been leased to the Taff Vale Railway Company, and it must be done by them out of their own capital. He had no objection to the Taff Vale Company being urged to carry out the work, because he thought the thing was self evident, and that the graving dock was of the greatest importance. When the dock was constructed, a place had been left for the gates, and the graving dock was provided for. - Engineering [516] [499] 11th March 1870.