Volume Five - The Age of Decline & Crass Stupidity - Some comments and a final rant! . . .

Closing Comments and Thanks.

I wish to say thank you to Tyne Built Ships for providing me with the motivation to collate this historical data, obtain personal recollections and research images of the life cycle of the dock, the engineering company and its pontoon. In the process it forced me to go up into my loft to find my boyhood collection of local shipping memorabilia. Reading back though the paper I am amazed at the number of references to members of my family whose lives have been shaped and influenced in some way by the social and economic factors of the time.

The fluctuations in economic conditions and fundamental changes in energy consumption and resources have influenced the rise and fall of the empire that was once king coal. I mourn its passing although it is easier to breath these days. That smell of sulphur mixed with steam and hot oil is only to found these days at heritage sites. I miss the distinct sound and that excitement that impels you to run to meet the approaching train in order to lean over the railway bridge just as the steam engine passes below. Diesel doesn't do the same for me and you just don’t get snot that size anymore!

The positives of our journey include a legal precedence for disgorgement damages and half of a marina. This has been a challenge but a timely opportunity to record an entertaining story from our rich industrial and maritime heritage that will be otherwise lost and forgotten.

One of the highlights of my journey has been to reflect upon the sheer stupidity of the removal of the pontoon constraints in the first place, the dam and the buried pontoon – it simply defies belief since the effects are obvious to predict. Why not simply attach a buoy at each end of the pontoon before saying goodbye? Did the worker(s) simply sit and watch the bubbles and eddies disappear; I believe Pounds must have done so with wry smiles on their faces and with retribution on their minds.

Then in a supposedly more enlightened age, the crass stupidity and indifference of the local council and numerous other government bodies and private entities in permitting the dock to be filled with waste and their indifference to the burial and destruction of such a wonderful heritage quayside.