The proud history of Pembrokeshire's shipping exports

These exports were researched in depth by Barbara George of Dale Field Centre in 1964 in a work entitled, ‘Pembrokeshire Sea Trading Before 1900’.

The area across the Severn Estuary, along the north Cornwall, Devon and Somerset coasts had forever been the closest destinations, with places such as Barnstaple, Ilfracombe and Bridgwater being consistent venues, as well as of course, the main destination of Bristol which had one wharf, amongst its many quays, named ‘Welsh Back.’

The remains of Hook Quay

Other major receivers of Pembrokeshire goods were Dublin and other Irish ports, small towns along the Welsh coast, and occasional trips to the east coast of England, France, Portugal and Spain.

The cargoes being carried were corn, coal, malt, wool, herrings, cheese and cloth, with corn and coal taking up, by far, premier positions.

The amount of these commodities being transported is difficult to ascertain due to the complex weights and measures systems finally brought into place by Edward 1 in 1303.

Two ‘Weys’ of wool made a ‘Sack’, each of which had to weigh twenty-eight stones - but a stone was twelve and a half pounds; twelve such sacks made a ‘Last.’

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So that’s wool, but a Last of herrings was ten thousand fish, with each thousand containing ten hundred, but each hundred containing one hundred and twenty fish.

Wheat had its own terminology and weights, and eight pounds of wheat made a gallon, with eight gallons making a bushel.

The size of the ships carrying all of this were small, typically described as perhaps two or three hundred tons, but this was usually referring to the amount that the ship could carry rather than the weight of the ship.

Ballas Island, Hook Quay

Anything that could be, was carried in barrels, being convenient to move about, but the main commodity carried out of Pembrokeshire, namely coal, was an extremely labour-intensive material that had to be handled multiple times.

To start with, small ships sent to pick up a load of coal at perhaps Landshipping or Hook required stone ballast to be loaded to make them stable.

This was then dumped close to the coal loading quay (there is a small ‘island’ close to the old Hook Quay that is known as ‘Ballast Island’) before a load of coal could be taken on.

If the load was for any destination other than a nearby coastal port, it had to be transferred to a bigger ship at either Llangwm, or Lawrenny that might be too big for the upper reaches of the river but could conduct sea voyages…and all of this had to be done by hand.

A further problem was, ‘culm.’ The anthracite found in Pembrokeshire is a very hard coal, sometimes referred to as ‘stone-coal.’

The nature of this hardness is such that on the plus side it is very clean and is smokeless due to its high carbon content – up to 98 per cent.

On the minus side however, it is extremely difficult to ignite and up to 20 per cent is so small as so resemble a powdery consistency - culm.

Culm had much less commercial value and as a consequence the colliery owners wanted a lower duty.

The legal definition of ‘culm’ was finally settled with an Act of Parliament (1816) passed in respect of duties to be paid.

The standard became that culm was any coal that would pass through a riddle with holes measuring 3/8 of an inch.

Well into the twentieth century, culm was used by mixing it with clay and forming balls which, ‘didn’t make for a cheery fire, a welcoming fire....it was more like a black volcano in the grate, with the poker having been forced down from the top to give it some oxygen, but then it just carried on going.

It never gave out intense heat but just about took the cold away.’ (Bill Jenkins 1913-2012 from ‘History in the Raw’; Mark Muller). More next week.