The Bay That Priced the World's Steam Coal Now Holds the Welsh Parliament: Tiger Bay, Cardiff
The Vanished Isles
1,105 views
In 1782 a customs officer at Cardiff wrote that no coal was exported from the port, "nor ever shall". In 1913 the same docks shipped 10.7 million tons of it - second in the world only to Barry, the rival port built a few miles down the coast - and a few streets back from the water, on the sunken trading floor of the Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square, shipowners, coal owners and their agents settled the price of Welsh steam coal: the fuel every navy wanted, quoted in ports from Piraeus to Recife against one yardstick: the price free on board at Cardiff.
It began on a marsh at the mouth of the Taff. The 2nd Marquess of Bute, a partially sighted Scottish landowner, mortgaged his estates to dig the West Bute Dock, opened in 1839 at a cost of about £350,000, and Brunel's Taff Vale Railway brought the valleys down to it. Around the docks grew Butetown - Tiger Bay - home by the First World War to seafarers from more than fifty nations. This is the story of what happened to them: the riots of June 1919, when the Chief Constable reported that "the aggressors have been those belonging to the white race" and three men died in Cardiff (eyewitnesses spoke of six); the 1925 order under which Black and Asian seamen who could not prove they were British were registered as aliens; the collapse of the coal trade; and the clearances of the 1960s, when Loudoun Square came down and two sixteen-storey towers went up. The Exchange closed in 1958 and the last coal left in 1964.
The empty docks became Cardiff Bay: a development corporation in 1987, a barrage across the bay, and in 2006 the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, on the old dockland less than five hundred yards from the trading floor. The Coal Exchange, twice considered as a home for a Welsh assembly, is now part hotel and part shell, and has twice been on the Victorian Society's list of buildings in danger. And the famous "first £1 million deal"? We test the legend against Hansard, the BBC and the newspapers of the day.
Butetown is very much alive: about twelve thousand people live there (2021 census), and the Norwegian Church, the Greek church and the mosques still stand among its streets.
What you'll learn
How a marquess who could barely see built a coal port on a marsh: the Bute Ship Canal Act of 1830, the West Bute Dock of 1839, Brunel's railway, the trustees who ran the docks for a baby heir, and the rival docks at Penarth and Barry.
What the Coal Exchange really did: the noon trading hour, the Cardiff price for Welsh steam coal and why the world's navies wanted it - and what is fact and what is legend in "the world's coal price" and "the first £1 million deal".
Tiger Bay itself: the sailortown of fifty nations, the lodging houses of Bute Street, the first purpose-built mosque in Wales, the riots of 1919, the 1925 seamen's order, and Betty Campbell, the Butetown girl who became Wales's first Black head teacher.
The end and the afterlife: the Exchange closed in 1958, the last coal in 1964, the council clearances, the Cardiff Bay barrage, the Senedd of 2006 - and a Grade II* exchange still waiting to be saved.
Educational and historical content.
Key sources
Hansard - Westminster Hall debate "Cardiff Coal Exchange", 20 April 2016 (business.senedd.wales)
Cadw listing - Cardiff Exchange Building, Mount Stuart Square, Grade II* (britishlistedbuildings.co.uk)
The National Archives - 1919 race riots: letter of the Chief Constable of Cardiff to the Home Office, 13 June 1919 (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales - Cardiff: Coal and Shipping Metropolis of the World (museum.wales)
A. Wegerich - Digging Deeper: Global Coal Prices and Industrial Growth, 1840-1960, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2016 (ora.ox.ac.uk)
and other sources
#history #Wales #Cardiff #TigerBay #Butetown #CoalExchange #TheVanishedIsles
ℹ️ About this video
Educational and historical content. The script, research and edit are the author's own, based on the sources listed in the description. The visual reconstructions and the narrator's voice are created with the help of AI, for illustrative purposes — these are not real recordings or authentic archival footage. Stories are simplified for a general audience and may contain small approximations. Purpose: to inform and to remember.
1 Comments
The Bay That Priced the World's Steam Coal Now Holds the Welsh Parliament: Tiger Bay, Cardiff
The Vanished Isles
1,105 views
In 1782 a customs officer at Cardiff wrote that no coal was exported from the port, "nor ever shall". In 1913 the same docks shipped 10.7 million tons of it - second in the world only to Barry, the rival port built a few miles down the coast - and a few streets back from the water, on the sunken trading floor of the Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square, shipowners, coal owners and their agents settled the price of Welsh steam coal: the fuel every navy wanted, quoted in ports from Piraeus to Recife against one yardstick: the price free on board at Cardiff.
It began on a marsh at the mouth of the Taff. The 2nd Marquess of Bute, a partially sighted Scottish landowner, mortgaged his estates to dig the West Bute Dock, opened in 1839 at a cost of about £350,000, and Brunel's Taff Vale Railway brought the valleys down to it. Around the docks grew Butetown - Tiger Bay - home by the First World War to seafarers from more than fifty nations. This is the story of what happened to them: the riots of June 1919, when the Chief Constable reported that "the aggressors have been those belonging to the white race" and three men died in Cardiff (eyewitnesses spoke of six); the 1925 order under which Black and Asian seamen who could not prove they were British were registered as aliens; the collapse of the coal trade; and the clearances of the 1960s, when Loudoun Square came down and two sixteen-storey towers went up. The Exchange closed in 1958 and the last coal left in 1964.
The empty docks became Cardiff Bay: a development corporation in 1987, a barrage across the bay, and in 2006 the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, on the old dockland less than five hundred yards from the trading floor. The Coal Exchange, twice considered as a home for a Welsh assembly, is now part hotel and part shell, and has twice been on the Victorian Society's list of buildings in danger. And the famous "first £1 million deal"? We test the legend against Hansard, the BBC and the newspapers of the day.
Butetown is very much alive: about twelve thousand people live there (2021 census), and the Norwegian Church, the Greek church and the mosques still stand among its streets.
What you'll learn
How a marquess who could barely see built a coal port on a marsh: the Bute Ship Canal Act of 1830, the West Bute Dock of 1839, Brunel's railway, the trustees who ran the docks for a baby heir, and the rival docks at Penarth and Barry.
What the Coal Exchange really did: the noon trading hour, the Cardiff price for Welsh steam coal and why the world's navies wanted it - and what is fact and what is legend in "the world's coal price" and "the first £1 million deal".
Tiger Bay itself: the sailortown of fifty nations, the lodging houses of Bute Street, the first purpose-built mosque in Wales, the riots of 1919, the 1925 seamen's order, and Betty Campbell, the Butetown girl who became Wales's first Black head teacher.
The end and the afterlife: the Exchange closed in 1958, the last coal in 1964, the council clearances, the Cardiff Bay barrage, the Senedd of 2006 - and a Grade II* exchange still waiting to be saved.
Educational and historical content.
Key sources
Hansard - Westminster Hall debate "Cardiff Coal Exchange", 20 April 2016 (business.senedd.wales)
Cadw listing - Cardiff Exchange Building, Mount Stuart Square, Grade II* (britishlistedbuildings.co.uk)
The National Archives - 1919 race riots: letter of the Chief Constable of Cardiff to the Home Office, 13 June 1919 (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales - Cardiff: Coal and Shipping Metropolis of the World (museum.wales)
A. Wegerich - Digging Deeper: Global Coal Prices and Industrial Growth, 1840-1960, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2016 (ora.ox.ac.uk)
and other sources
#history #Wales #Cardiff #TigerBay #Butetown #CoalExchange #TheVanishedIsles
ℹ️ About this video
Educational and historical content. The script, research and edit are the author's own, based on the sources listed in the description. The visual reconstructions and the narrator's voice are created with the help of AI, for illustrative purposes — these are not real recordings or authentic archival footage. Stories are simplified for a general audience and may contain small approximations. Purpose: to inform and to remember.