Volume Ten - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - Even more aspects - The Lloyd's Register at Penarth Dock . . .

Vessel	Tons (Net) (Gross)	Nat.	Desc.	Voyage	Detail	Date
Ella Sayer	1618 2549	British	s.s.	Penarth - Dunkerque	Sunk by UB-57 15 miles off Royal Sovereign Light Vessel.	30/04/1918
Excellent	1147 1944	British	s.s.	Penarth - Lerwick	Sunk by U70 40 miles off Noup Head, Orkney.	01/09/1917

The importance of findings of Lloyd's surveyors at Penarth Dock is illustrated by the following newspaper report regarding the s.s. 'Horden' dating from July 1884:

IMPORTANT SHIPPING ACTION AT PENARTH. A WEST HARTLEPOOL SHIPPER HEAVILY FINED. At the Penarth Police-court on Monday before Messrs J. S. Corbett, J. Lewis, Alderman Duncan and J. Fry — Robert Ropner, shipowner, West Hartlepool, was charged under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1876, with a violation of the rule relating to the placing of lines on vessels. Mr Vachell (Messrs. Ingledew, Ince, and Vachell), Cardiff, represented the Board of Trade, who were the prosecutors and Mr T. Stephens, Cardiff, appeared for the defendant.

Mr Vachell, in his opening statement said the defendant was charged with neglecting to keep his ship marked conformably with the provisions of the Act of Parliament, which required in section 25 that every British ship should be prominently and conspicuously marked on both her sides with a white line, showing where her main deck met the vessel's side.

There was a further provision that every vessel should be marked before she went to sea, with a disc. The object of having the white line showing the deck was that the Board of Trade might see what distance divided the main deck from the place to where the vessel was to be loaded. The gross register of the steamship in question, the Horden, was 1622 tons. She was a British vessel, and the offence with which the defendant was charged was, that instead of having his deck line marked at the point where the upper plank of the deck met the side of the vessel, he put his deck line on the port side, six inches higher up on the bulwarks, and he put the deck line on the starboard 3¾ inches too high.