Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Report upon Penarth Dock - 1984 . . .

5.0 - Sources of Information

This section is intended to describe the sources of information used to produce this document.

The most important source of information from a technical viewpoint was a book entitled 'Dock and Harbours', written by L. F. Vernon-Harcourt and published in 1885. The book represents a text book on the dock and harbour engineering practices of the time and uses Penarth Dock as a frequent example. The book is particularly valuable since it contains several illustrations taken from the original plans of the dock. These are the only such illustrations known to exist at the present time. Much of the material presented in section 3 and 4 originated from this source.

Probably the second most important source of information was a set of photographs taken by a Cardiff firm of photographers on behalf of the engineers responsible for Penarth Dock. The photographs numbering 28 in all were taken during construction of the dock and provided a valuable source of information and again were used extensively to compile section 3 and 4.

The technical periodicals 'Engineering' and 'The Engineer' provided a considerable amount of information. 'Engineering' provided the information regarding the dock extension and its progress discussed in section 2 whilst 'The Engineer' provide some of the introductory material from section 2 and much of the material about the floating dry-dock featured in section 3. Many general details of Penarth Dock including those featured in some of the appendices also originated from articles in 'Engineering' and 'The Engineer'.

In addition papers read at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Civil Engineers provided information for most of the sections. Also to supplement information provided by Vernon-Harcourt's book another general textbook on dock engineering was used. This was entitled 'Dock and Harbour Engineering, Volume 1', written by H. F. Cornick and published in 1970.

Finally there were a number of sources of information which despite being of minor technical importance provided much of the historical background detailed in section 2.