My Grandfather Charlie, his brothers, and their sister were all born at Hean Castle, Saundersfoot, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whilst most of them stayed around the village, one left for Australia and another brother, Thomas, moved…

Pembroke Dock (Doc Penfro) and adjacent Milford Haven (Aberdaugleddau) both developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from small village settlements, Paterstown and Hubberstown, on the banks of the Cleddau river. The vast natural harbour…

The Royal Military Dockyard Chapel was completed in 1835. It is the only Georgian Military chapel left in the United Kingdom. It was a place for the dockyard workers, the military personnel and their families to gather to worship. By 1926 however,…

The oldest building in Pembroke Dock is the tower that stands behind the dockyard wall on Fort Road. Although the Anglican church in Pembroke Dock, dedicated to St John the Evangelist, appears to have a tall tower that is similar to other distinctive…

'Pembroke Dock' is an abbreviation of 'Pembroke Dockyard', the new name given to the location in 1817. The Royal Navy had built the dockyard and adjacent town three years earlier in 1814, initially calling it 'Pater Yard'. The sole purpose of the…

The first scheduled steam packet service between West Wales and Ireland can be traced to back the year 1824. It was in that year that the Post Office replaced its sailing packets on the Milford Haven to Waterford run with steamships. The…

After the end of ship building in Pembroke Dock in 1926, the RAF set up an air base for flying boats in the disused dockyard in 1930. In 1938, they introduced the famous Sunderland flying boats to the fleet. During the Second World War, Pembroke Dock…

A current ferry port and a former naval dockyard isn’t the first place you might think about visiting if you were interested in the history and heritage of flying. But Pembroke Dock possesses two important and related claims to fame when it comes to…

A local story in Pembroke Dock concerns the launch of HMS Caesar, planned for July 21, 1853. The ship was a wooden two decker, screw propelled ship of ninety-one guns. As was the custom on launch days all the residents of Pembroke Dock would flock…

In 1857, Pembroke Dock was the setting for the remarkable climax of the haunting of the HMS Asp which, at the time, was used as a surveying vessel in the Royal Navy under the command of one Captain George Manley Alldridge (1815–1905). Over the…

The gun tower in Front Street, Pembroke Dock, is commonly referred to as the 'Martello tower'. However, when it was built it was known as a Cambridge Gun Tower. Emperor Louis Napoleon III was building a Second Empire of France in the 1840's, and was…

Until the mid-nineteenth century, Japan was a feudal state governed by a network of powerful families and warlords led by its Shogun, isolated from the rest of the world. At that point, there was a growing realisation that China and Russia were…

David James sat down with Ports, Past and Present to share the fascinating story behind Pembroke Dock's 80-foot tall ginkgo tree and its link with the creation of Japan's modern navy.

In the just over 200 years of its existence, Pembroke Dock has had a proud history of building hundrets of ships, large and not so large, motorised and propelled by wind. Although the dockyard has been closed now for several decades, ships still get…

David James sat down with Ports, Past and Present and shared his memories of moving to Pembroke Dock as a child during the Second World War and the pastimes he enjoyed with friends around the town and down by the river edge.Bu David James yn rhannu…

David James sat down with Ports, Past and Present to share his passion for sailing and talks about a particularly fine sailing yacht that he restored and sailed for many years. Ahoi!Bu David James yn sôn wrth Borthladdoedd, Ddoe a Heddiw, am ei…

Throughout the First World War, the UK imported significant amounts of food from the United States, Canada and through Gibraltar. The German naval command calculated that they could starve Britain into surrender and win the war with a five-month…

We may associate seabirds with islands – puffins standing sentinel on ledges, guillemots in serried ranks on slim ledges – but this is only a temporary habitat. On land they are edgy, vulnerable to predation. These are, after all, sea birds and the…

The cluster of rocks known as The Smalls, 20 miles off the coast of south west Wales, was a major shipping hazard, notorious for ferocious rip tides, until 1777 when an unorthodox timber lighthouse structure was erected consisting of nine stout oak…