- Holland & Hannen and Cubitts - The Inception and Development of a Great Building Firm, published 1920
- "Cardiff - Coal and Shipping Metropolis" By Dr David Jenkins, National Museums & Galleries of Wales. Published: 3 May 2005
Cardiff Docks were the major port of South Wales for the export of coal, until capacity issues from 1910 onwards meant that the more modern design and easier less tidal access of Barry Docks took over as the largest volume export point of coal. Cardiff Docks remains a point of export for goods from South Wales, second only in volume to Newport Docks.
Following the development of the coal found in the Cyon and Rhondda valley's and Merthyr area of South Wales, the export of both coal and iron products required a sea connection to the Bristol Channel if economic volumes of product were to be created.
In 1794, the Glamorganshire Canal was completed, linking the then small town of Cardiff with Merthyr, and in 1798 a basin was built, connecting the canal to the sea.
Increasing agitation for proper dock facilities led Cardiff's foremost landowner, John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute, to promote the construction of the (West) Bute Dock, opened in October 1839. Just two years later, the Taff Vale Railway was opened, following much the same route as the canal.
With the construction of the new East Bute Dock from 1855, built by Thomas Cubitt's firm,[1] its opening in 1859 resulted in coal supplanting iron as the industrial foundation of South Wales, with exports reaching 2 million tons as early as 1862.
Frustration at the lack of development at Cardiff led to rival docks being opened at Penarth in 1865 and Barry, Wales in 1889. These developments eventually spurred Cardiff into action, with the opening of the Roath Dock in 1887, and the Queen Alexandra Dock in 1907. By then, coal exports from the South Wales Coalfield via Cardiff totalled nearly 9 million tons per annum, much of it exported in the holds of locally-owned tramp steamers. By 1913, this had risen to 10,700,000 tons, making Cardiff the biggest coal exporting dock in the world.
Cardiff's first steamship was the Llandaff of 1865, and by 1910, there were some 250 tramp steamers owned at Cardiff, by prominent firms such as Cory, Morel, Radcliffe, Tatem and Reardon-Smith. Each day, the principals of these companies would meet to arrange cargoes of coal for their ships in the opulent Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square. This trade reached its pinnacle in 1913, when 10.7 million tons of coal were exported from the port. After the First World War, there was a boom in shipping in Cardiff, with 122 shipping companies in existence in 1920. The boom proved short-lived, however; oil was growing in importance as a maritime fuel, and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles soon flooded Europe with cheap German reparation coal.
The Taff Vale Railway was built to transport coal from the South Wales Valleys to the docks. Its headquarters were a currently derelict building in Cardiff Bay railway station. The building was turned into a railway heritage centre in 1979 by the Butetown Historic Railway Society. By 1994 the Society had started to run steam locomotive hauled passenger services up and down 500 metres of track. However, as the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation had no interest in the railway, the Society changed its name to the Vale of Glamorgan Railway and moved from the site in 1997 to Barry Island railway station.
By 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression which followed the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, coal exports had fallen to below 5 million tons and dozens of locally owned ships were laid-up. It was an era of depression from which Cardiff never really recovered, and despite intense activity at the port during the Second World War, coal exports continued to decline, finally ceasing in 1964.
Tiger Bay was notorious for being a tough and dangerous area to be in. Merchant seamen arrived in Cardiff from all over the world, only staying for as long as it took to discharge and reload their ships. Consequently many murders and lesser crimes went unsolved and unpunished, the perpetrators having sailed for other ports.
The Cardiff Bay Development Corporation was created in 1987 to counter the effects of economic depression in this run-down area. Today, the port of Cardiff and what is now known as Cardiff Bay has been totally transformed by the Cardiff Barrage that impounds the Rivers Taff and the Ely to create a massive fresh-water lake. Only two docks, the Roath and the Queen Alexandra, remain in use, and just two shipping companies remain, albeit buoyant with their world-wide interests. There is still some trade in timber, oil, scrap and containers.
