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

The declining dock was still a great attraction to local boys. The ships and foreign seamen ;  the clatter of wagons on the sidings and tips, and the temptation of obtaining peanuts which had been brought as ballast, led to the dock's police having a busy time reprimanding boys firmly, but kindly, for trespassing on the dangerous docks. Another target was Mr. Plisson’s orchard near Northcliffe.

Many Penarth boys went to sea when they left school at the age of fourteen, and some went out on tug boats. Charles Lawday’s father, Bert Lawday, was skipper of the old tug "Primrose" during the first world war and into the 1920's, and Charles, when a young boy at school, often went on the boat working at Penarth Dock.

He recounted how the "Primrose" would often act as a 'rudder' to ships leaving the dock under their own steam, but lacking steerage way. The prow of the ship underway would, of course, be pointing towards the basin, but the prow of the tug would be pointing in the opposite direction. A tow rope from the tug amidships was passed through a bridle of rope, and over the stern to the stern of the vessel underway.

On one occasion the deck hand, named "Charlie" had forgotten the bridle end when the ship got underway she pulled the tug broadside and over on the beam so much so that one gunwhale was awash. Charles Lauday was aboard with his father and he says, "everything loose went flying and everybody too."