National Waterfront Museum

While Wales is working hard to drive forward a positive climate agenda, with a target of 100% renewable electricity by 2035, our industrial past casts a long environmental shadow. Here Jennifer Protheroe-Jones, Principal Curator – Industry looks at our industrial history and its impact.

Wales was an early and unwitting contributor to climate change.

The 1851 Census showed that Wales was the first nation to have more people employed in industry than in agriculture, the important switch having probably occurred in the mid to late 1840s.

Wales was a notable international centre of industry in the mid 19^th century, being one of the most important iron producing nations, and the centre of both the world copper and tinplate industries. Plentiful easily worked coal underpinned all these industries – to fuel furnaces, to power steam engines that drove machinery and locomotives that hauled raw materials and finished products.

An ocean of railway wagons loaded with coal in sidings adjacent to Roath Dock, Cardiff, awaiting shipment in March 1927. The initials on the wagons identify a range of major colliery companies: Burnyeat, Brown & Co Ltd; D.Davis & Sons Ltd; Nixon’s Navigation Coal Co Ltd; United National Collieries Ltd.

Welsh steam coal is ideally suited to steam-raising. It burns with relatively little smoke, produces limited amounts of ash and produces a great deal of heat. As it burns, steam coal fissures but does not crack into small pieces. The fissures allow the coal to burn from the inside as well as from the outside, considerably increasing the heat output and so increasing the steam-raising properties of the fuel. Because steam coal does not break into small pieces as it burns, it sits on top of the fire bars and burns, rather than trickling through the bars as small fragments of unburnt coal which would go to waste amongst the ash. This property of not breaking into small pieces is specially relevant to fuel used in locomotives, because the vibration of the locomotive as it moves along the track tends to make poorer quality fuels break into small pieces which are wasted when they trickle through the fire bars into the ash pit. These properties made Welsh steam coal a premium fuel in wide demand.      

A few decades later, exports of Welsh coal would outstrip the large amounts being used by industries within Wales. By the start of the twentieth century, south Wales was the most important coal exporting coalfield in the world, supplying diverse countries with steam coal. In energy terms, the Bristol Channel was at this time the equivalent of the Persian Gulf a hundred years later. If high quality fuel capable of powering the widest range of machinery was required, then the coal-exporting ports of south Wales were key places to obtain it.

Aerial view looking south east over Cardiff (East Moors) Steel Works around 1960.

In the 19^th century the sight of smoke from works’ chimney stacks was regarded as a sign of prosperity. By the early 20^th century smoke from burning coal was increasingly recognised as a nuisance but regarded as unavoidable. It was not until after the second world war that serious efforts began to be made to reduce the volumes of smoke from industries and from coal fires in houses – and by this time oil was globally becoming a more important energy source than coal.

The burning of coal, oil and natural gas releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause climate change. Internationally, today the largest uses of coal are in electricity generation, cement manufacture and in steel making. Coal ceased to be used to generate electricity in Wales in March 2020; coal continues to be used in the steel and cement industries. 

Tipping a railway wagon of coal at Cardiff Docks, early 20^th century. Some coals tended to break up so, instead of tipping the wagons directly into ships’ holds from a considerable height, the coal was tipped into a Lewis Hunter patent ‘coaling box’ (just visible below the copious coal dust) which was picked up by the dockside crane on the left and lowered into the ship’s hold, minimising the height that the coal was dropped.

The Welsh coalfields were intensively mined in the 19^th century and output peaked in 1913, declining thereafter due to exhaustion of accessible reserves of coal. Output in 1913 was 60 million tons, half of which was exported; in 2018 output was down to 1.1 million tons. Welsh coal output was in steep decline by the time climate change was widely recognised as a major global issue. Each year the world now produces over a hundred times as much coal as Wales did in 1913, when the Welsh coal industry was at its peak. Even back in 1913, Wales was only producing around 5% of world coal output – its importance at the time was that half of it was exported and that it was regarded as the premium fuel of its time.   

The complex web of communications that enabled Welsh coal to be traded internationally is explained in the Coal gallery at the National Waterfront Museum at Swansea.

 

 

The  National Waterfront Museum will be fifteen years old this autumn, so recently staff have been looking through our archive of the opening ceremony on 17th October 2005. 

Steph Mastoris Head of the Waterfront Museum, reading Gwyneth Lewis' poem at the opening of the Museum 

That day was a great moment of celebration, as the museum had taken around five years to plan, build and fill with fascinating displays on the story of Welsh industrialisation over the past four centuries. Also, because interactive displays were then still a very

Steph Mastoris Head of the Waterfront Museum, reading Gwyneth Lewis' poem at the opening of the Museum 

new thing for museums there was considerable public interest in what was soon to be described as Wales' first digital museum.​

Over 200 invited guests attended the opening ceremony that was conducted by the (then) First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, and rugby legend Sir Gareth Edwards. The first National Poet of Wales, Gwyneth Lewis, composed a bilingual poem in honour of the museum and this was read at the opening ceremony by the National Museum's Keeper of Industry, Dr David Jenkins, and myself. 

It was certainly a day to remember!

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s highest award for gallantry is its Gold Medal, only 150 of which have been awarded since 1824. Richard Evans (1905-2001), Coxswain of the Moelfre Lifeboat, Anglesey, remarkably was presented with two RNLI Gold Medals for heroic rescues at sea.

Richard Evans won his first Gold Medal on 27 October 1959 when in hurricane force winds the M.V. Hindlea, a small cargo ship, was dragging its anchor in Moelfre Bay and being driven onto the rocky coast. The captain of the Hindlea gave the order to abandon ship when only 200 yards from the rocky shore and coxswain Evans took the Moelfre reserve lifeboat Edmund and Mary Robinson, with an incomplete crew, close to the ship ten times, enabling the eight man crew to one by one jump onto the lifeboat. During the rescue the lifeboat was once washed onto the deck of the ship and back off, and the coxswain had to manoeuvre perilously close to the ship’s propellers which were churning at full speed, at times out of the water and above the lifeboat. At one point the lifeboat heeled over until its mast was under water before righting itself. Thirty five minutes after the last of the crew were saved, the Hindlea struck the rocks and was lost.  

R.N.L.B. Watkin Williams, the Moelfre lifeboat from 1957 to 1977, on which Richard Evans won his second R.N.L.I. Gold Medal in 1966. The lifeboat was donated to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales in 1983 and displayed until 1998; it is currently in store but can be viewed by appointment.

On 2 December 1966 coxswain Evans won his second Gold Medal. The Moelfre lifeboat Watkin William had been at sea since early morning having been called out to two vessels in trouble. They were then told that the Greek cargo vessel M.V. Nafsiporos was being driven out of control by 100 mile an hour winds towards Point Lynas, five miles north of Moelfre, and the Holyhead and Moelfre lifeboats went to her assistance. The Holyhead lifeboat rescued five of the crew and sustained damage. The Moelfre lifeboat rescued ten more crew but the captain and three crew of the Nafsiporos remained on board. After landing the rescued crew members at Moelfre, coxswain Evans took the lifeboat back to the Nafsiporos and stood by all night until a tug from Liverpool arrived and managed to take the cargo vessel in tow. The lifeboat returned to Moefre after 24 hours at sea; coxswain Evans, then aged 61, had been at the wheel the entire time.

Over his 50 years as a lifeboatman Richard Evans was involved in 179 launches which rescued 281 lives. In addition to his two RNLI Gold Medals, for other rescues he was awarded the Thanks of the RNLI on Vellum and the RNLI Bronze Medal, for the 1959 rescue was awarded the Queen’s Silver Medal for gallantry at sea, and in 1969 was awarded the British Empire Medal. In 1978 he was made an Honorary Bard at the National Eisteddfod.

On a Monday morning in January 2016 I received a phone call from the Museum’s archaeology department in Cardiff. It turned out that the storm a few days earlier had shifted the sand in Oxwich Bay on the Gower. Apparently a wreck had been uncovered and some old wooden casks were visible!

Because National Waterfront Museum in Swansea is the home of our Maritime Collection, I was asked to take a look and grab a few images before the sand covered it up again. As curator I’m part of the National Museum’s History & Archaeology Department, and I studied archaeology at Trinity College Carmarthen so I was well up to the task. Now, as much as I love a field trip, it was January and a cold wind was blowing from the Atlantic, but the weather in two days’ time was supposed to be fine. I hunted for my wellies (found in the boot of the car eventually) and charged my camera batteries.

So Wednesday morning bright and early found me in the car park for Oxwich Bay. Time was on my side, as at nine o’clock the tide was out as far as it would go that day. I had vague directions to follow as to where on the beach the barrels had been found – a very crude ‘X marks the spot’ hand drawn map. There was no scale on the map so I started at the western end of the beach and worked my way across it, zig-zagging to check out every little bump in the sand.

There were a lot of bumps too! Many pieces of metal, plainly from ships that had ended up there. Bits of steel rope, hull plating and rusty conglomerates. It was a lovely day for the search even though a keen wind was

Barrel exposed on the beach

blowing from the north now making the tops of the breakers misty. Then in the distance I spotted a larger disturbance in the sand and I could make out barrel shapes. There appeared to be six barrels and pieces of broken barrels, none of them were intact. They were lovely wooden casks and we had all hoped that they might be at least a few hundred years old. Alas, their proximity to a piece of steel hull spoke of a more recent wreck. Throughout the Twentieth Century, during WW2 and just after, a number of ships ended up on Oxwich Beach. Some were re-floated but others were broken up for scrap.

With such scant evidence it was impossible to tell which our ship was. The barrels contained a hard concrete-like substance, which later proved to be lime - originally a powder, it hard set hard in the sea water. Lime is used for a number of things such as making cement or lime mortar; as a soil improver just spread on the land, and for marking white lines on football pitches!

Wooden barrel containing hardened lime revealed by winter storms at Oxwich Bay

I took plenty of images and luckily had remembered to take a 30cm ruler with me to give a scale to the casks. As I worked I noticed the tide had turned and was getting closer and closer soon to cover the scene. It was time to leave and make my way back to the Waterfront Museum.

Are the barrels still visible? I don’t know. The power of the sea shifts the sand about after every storm revealing and then hiding historic treasures away maybe for another seventy years, maybe never to be seen again….

While The National Waterfront Museum’s GRAFT team and volunteers cannot gather to garden the Museum’s courtyard garden at this time, they are nonetheless keeping busy setting up ‘Seeds Out in the Community’ and encouraging us all to grow sunflowers in visible and public spaces to show support for key workers. Here’s a little more about this innovative community project and how it’s grown from a seed of an idea to a flourishing project that grows plants, food and people.

GRAFT: a soil based syllabus is the National Waterfront Museum's edible land and educational project, and a permanent piece of green infrastructure within Swansea City Centre. The project is also a socially engaged work of art by artist Owen Griffiths, and was originally commissioned as part of Now the Hero / Nawr Yr Arwr in 2018 funded by 1418NOW as part of a huge UK wide cultural project commemorating the first World War.

GRAFT works with community groups from a wide range of backgrounds across the city who came together, to transform the Museum's once industrial courtyard into a beautiful, sustainable, organic growing environment; creating an edible landscape to encourage participation and conversation around land use, food and sustainability in an accessible and empowering way.

Owen and Senior Learning Officer Zoe Gealy develop the ongoing program at GRAFT around these ideas of collaboration, sustainability and community. Every Friday, (other than during this lockdown), volunteers young and old work alongside one another to share skills working in wood and metal, learning how to grow plants, gaining qualifications and supporting each other along the way. The project has seen successful apprenticeships develop as a result of its program as well as seeing the long-term mental health benefits of working outside together. New friendships are formed, and people, as well as plants, flourish. During GRAFT’s development, in addition to raised beds, a pergola and benches from local timber, a cob pizza oven and beehives have been introduced to the garden. GRAFT's youngest volunteers come from Cefn Saeson School in Neath and work with Alyson Williams, the resident Beekeeper, learning about biodiversity, the environment and working together to care for the bees.

Some of the produce grown in the garden usually makes its way into delicious meals at the Museum's café whilst some is used for community meals at GRAFT. A portion of produce is used by volunteers, and some is donated to projects and groups throughout the area who provide food for those in need, such as Matts House, Ogof Adullam and the Swansea refugee drop in centre.

SPREADING SEEDS AND SUNSHINE DURING LOCKDOWN

Over the coming weeks GRAFT will be posting seeds through City and County of Swansea’s food parcel scheme and to community groups they regularly work with such as Roots Foundation and CRISIS. The seeds include squash and sunflowers, which were harvested by the gardeners last season.

Another initiative GRAFT is developing in the coming weeks is encouraging people to plant sunflowers in visible and public spaces, to show support for key workers alongside rainbow paintings. People are also invited to post pictures of their successful growing on GRAFT’s social media pages.

To request seeds contact zoe.gealy@museumwales.ac.uk

07810 657170

During lock-down, the GRAFT garden continues to need some tending and so  The National Waterfront Museum's on-site team are watering the GRAFT garden and seedlings during their daily shifts.

With thanks to players of the People’s Postcode Lottery for supporting Amgueddfa Cymru’s public programme of activities and events.

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