Cardiff Docks

Cardiff Docks (Welsh: Dociau Caerdydd) is a port in southern Cardiff, Wales. At its peak, the port was one of the largest dock systems in the world with a total quayage of almost 7 mi (11 km). Once the main port for the export of South Wales coal, the Port of Cardiff remains active in the import and export of containers, steel, forest products and dry and liquid bulks.

Following the development of the coal found in the Cynon Valley, Rhondda Valley, and Merthyr areas 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 extracted.

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. By the 1830s, Cardiff became the pre-eminent iron-exporting port, shipping almost half of British overseas iron exports; between 1840 and 1870, the volume of coal exports increased from 44,350 to 2.219 million tonnes.

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. The dock design was by Admiral William Henry Smyth and the resident engineer was George Turnbull. Two years after the October 1839 dock opening, 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, designed by James Walker of Messrs. Walker & Burges and built by Thomas Cubitt's firm, 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.

The Bute Docks Feeder supplied the East Bute Dock with water extracted from the River Taff at Blackweir in Maindy, and now supplies the Roath Dock. It is largely an open canal through central Cardiff, other than a culvert between the New Theatre and the Cardiff International Arena.

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 second only to Barry, Wales as the largest coal exporting dock in the world.