| One of the earliest of the Cardiff shipbuilding yards was that of Joseph Davies on the banks of the River Taff (on the site of the old Western Mail Building in St.Mary Street, now demolished). This yard was established before the beginning of the 19th century, and probably built the brig "Brother" of 79 tons in 1788, for Walter Coffin, the Coal Exporter. In 1822 the Davies yard was taken over by William Jones, who ran it until 1843, when it was acquired by Batchelor Bros. Richard Tredwin has been mentioned above in connection with the opening of Cardiff's first dry dock in 1829 and built a number of vessels from 1830 onwards. In the 1850s his company was still building small boats. Tredwin's yard was taken over in 1857, when Tredwin died, by his nephews John & Thomas Hodges In 1843, John Batchelor came to Cardiff from Newport and set up in business, with his brother Sidney, as Batchelor Bros. Taking over the William Jones yard on the bank of the River Taff at the lower end of St.Mary Street (as mentioned above) Around 1849 Batchelor Bros moved to a new yard near the West Dock. This company operated very successfully for a number of years and subsequently opened the Mount Stuart Graving Dock and a timber yard in Cardiff. It has been suggested that the downfall of John Batchelor was that he was a strong Liberal reformer and very much anti Bute Estate. As a result the Bute Estate was loathe to allow the Batchelors to expand their business and in 1873 the company went into liquidation. The Mount Stuart Graving Dock was sold by the bankers (as mortgagees) to J Laughlandand who sold it on to Sir John Gunn. The other Batchelor Yard was taken over by Charles Hill & Sons.. In the late 1850s a number of other boatbuilders were in existence in Cardiff, notably Davies & Plain on the East Dock were responsible for constructing many of the pilot cutters used in the Bristol Channel, and the Bute Docks Steam Shipbuilding Co. which launched the first Cardiff built steamship, The Lady Bute, in 1863. By the 1860s Rogers Bros., Barrett & Hill, G.Davies, G.Down, William Rees, William Thomas, Wm.Luxton, Cowell & Robinson, Gullivor & Brown and others were all building small ships at the Docks, and Charles Hill of Bristol (mentioned above as taking over the Batchelor Bros. Yard) had also set up their Cardiff branch launching ships of up to 1000 tons. In addition, on the river estuary the Bute Shipyard was established in 1865 by Maudsley, then taken over by Scott Russell, becoming in 1885 the Bute Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co.Ltd. In the 1870s further companies became established, eg Harvey & Son, Langmaid & Co., W.F.Pile & Co., Palmers Shipbuilding & Iron Co., the Penarth Shipbuilding and Repair Co., and, perhaps most importantly in the long run, R.H.Mitchell's Bute Docks Steam Shipbuilding Co. (mentioned above) was taken over by Sir John Gunn to become the Mountstuart Shipbuilding, Graving Dock and Engineering Co. Other long lived ship repair companies were also set up in the early 1880s, the Bute Dry Dock and the Cardiff Junction Dry Dock, Cardiff Ship Repair Co., Bute Commercial Dry Dock Co., South Wales Engineering Works and Ship Repair Co., the Channel Dry Docks and Engineering Co., Barry Graving Dock (at Barry), Windsor Slipways Dry Dock and Engineering Co. (later taken over by Mordey, Carney & Co), the Central Engineering and Ship Repairing Works (owned by Mordey, Carney & Co) and Hills Dry Dock and Engineering Co. With the establishment of so many new companies, added to the older established ones, Cardiff became a major World Centre for ship repair, although it never became important in ship building, perhaps as a result of the difficulties of the narrow channel approach to the Docks. |
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