A Brief History of Swansea Docks.
Swansea’s development as a major port began during the early
eighteenth century when a rapid expansion in local coal mining and
iron production, together with the introduction of copper smelting
and tinplate manufacture, resulted in the establishment of many new
wharves along the banks of the River Tawe.
As
trade increased throughout the eighteenth century it became
necessary to provide more permanent harbour facilities and so, in
1791, the Swansea Harbour Trust was founded to undertake this
responsibility. The role of the Trust was to “repair, enlarge and
preserve the Harbour of Swansea”, and its first task was to widen
and deepen the entrance channel to allow access to the larger
trading vessels of the day. Then, in 1794, a stone light-house was
erected on Mumbles Head to improve local navigation and, in 1809,
work was completed on the building of two stone breakwaters which
enclosed and protected the river entrance and formed a small tidal
harbour within the area known as Fabian’s Bay.
The
continuing growth of traffic between the port and the collieries and
smelting industries of the Swansea Valley brought about the need for
an improved system of transportation, and this led to the completion
of the Swansea Canal between Ystradgynlais and Swansea in 1798. This
eighteen mile long waterway connection contributed greatly to the
development of Swansea’s maritime trade, as did the later
construction of the Neath & Swansea Junction (Tennant) Canal which
opened in 1824 to provide a link between the Neath Canal at
Aberdulais Basin and ‘Port Tennant’ in Fabian’s Bay, Swansea.
By
this time, the local copper industry – which had begun with the
commissioning of the Landore Copperworks in 1717 – was flourishing
due to the ready availability of the high-grade of anthracite coal
that was essential to the copper-smelting process. During its peak
in the middle of the nineteenth century, seventeen of the eighteen
copperworks in Great Britain were located within the Swansea area.
As time went on, the techniques that had been developed within this
industry were adapted to other non-ferrous metals such as lead,
zinc, tin, nickel, silver, and even gold, and Swansea was to become
acknowledged as a world leader in the business of metallurgical
processing and manufacture.
To
accommodate such a rapidly escalating level of trade the Swansea
Harbour Trust found it necessary to provide larger and more
efficient port facilities, and so the Town Float – later to be known
as the North Dock – was constructed by diverting the lower reach of
the River Tawe into a new channel or ‘cut’, and forming an enclosed
dock on the original course of the river bed. This work was
completed in 1852 and, in that same year, a private concern known as
the Swansea Dock Company began constructing a second enclosed dock –
the South Dock – on the west bank and foreshore of the River Tawe.
Financial complications set in, however, and the Swansea Dock
Company was eventually bought up by the Swansea Harbour Trust, who
completed the project in 1859.
By
1870 the port was handling over 1.5 million tons per annum, and in
1877 it was recorded that “there is no other harbour in the Kingdom
where such an amount of work is done on a given space as at
Swansea”. Such growth made imperative the need for further port
facilities and so, in 1879, the Swansea Harbour Trust began the
construction of a new enclosed dock on the east side of the River
Tawe, taking in the whole area of Fabian’s Bay. Known as the Prince
of Wales Dock, it was completed in 1881 and extended to its present
size in 1898.
Despite a sharp decline in the local copper trade towards the end of
the nineteenth century Swansea continued to prosper as a port, with
coal exports alone running at over 2 million tonnes per annum.
Tinplate exports had also increased – from just 6,000 tons in 1875
to more that 250,000 tons in 1895 – to become one of Swansea’s major
traffics. Further port expansion was again required and, in 1905,
work commenced on Kings Dock - a larger dock on the seaward side of
the Prince of Wales Dock. This work was completed in 1909, together
with the long breakwater which encloses the large area of water
which was to become known as Queens Dock, which was officially
opened in 1920.
With
the Kings Dock in operation the exportation of coal, coke and patent
fuel quickly grew, reaching a record level of 5.5 million tons in
1913. Tinplate exports reached their peak in 1924, when 621,000 tons
were shipped through the port. However, the early twentieth century
saw the beginning of a change in industrial energy resources from
coal to oil, and the first oil refinery to be built in the UK - the
Llandarcy Refinery – was completed in 1918. Facilities were
developed within Queens Dock to cater for this new traffic and,
during the height of the trade in the early 1950’s, oil imports and
exports through the Port of Swansea totalled around 8 million tons
per annum.
The
development of the new docks system on the east side of the River
Tawe, together with the progressive reduction of coal exports due to
the increasing use of oil, resulted in the docks on the west side of
the river becoming largely obsolete. The North Dock closed in 1930 –
although the lower basin remained open until 1969 – and the South
Dock closed in 1971, only to be thoroughly revitalised in later
years later as Swansea’s prestigious Maritime Quarter. Today, of
course, the Prince of Wales Dock is the centrepiece of the new SA1
redevelopment scheme, whilst the Queens Dock has been rendered
virtually redundant by the closure of both the Llandarcy Oil
Refinery and the BP Chemicals plant at Baglan Bay. Principally,
therefore, it is the Kings Dock that continues to handle the
remaining commercial traffic of the Port of Swansea.
Note:- Control of the port was
retained by the Swansea Harbour Trust until 1923, when the ownership
of Swansea and other South Wales ports was transferred to the Great
Western Railway Company. Nationalisation under the Transport Act of
1947 brought Swansea Docks into public ownership under the British
Transport Commission and later, from 1963, under the British
Transport Docks Board. The present administrative authority,
Associated British Ports, succeeded the British Transport Docks
Board in 1982 as part of the government’s drive for privatisation.
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