Book Description
Combining history and humour, poetry and prose, this book is a perceptive insider's view of life in old Cardiff docklands. There are stories aplenty—of Tiger Bay, the Docks and the Glamorganshire Canal; of churches, missions and street corner bookies; of seamen, dock workers and the fat lady who had three sailor husands, each convinced that she was his faithful spouse. Not all the stories are happy: there are sad ones too. These are lyrical tales, history as recalled through the eyes of an old seaman, a trip down memory lane that can be read and enjoyed by all.
From the Author
I first shook hands with Cardiff as a boy seaman in the mid-thirties. Since those days I have walked every inch of the docklands a thousand times, from the foreshore to the Hayes. It was magic all those years back, and now, more than six decades later, it still is.
About the Author
Harry 'Shipmate' Cooke, born in Liverpool in 1921, has lived for some 60 years in Cardiff docklands. He first went to sea at age 14 and spent 20 eventful years as a merchant seaman—visiting the world's ports, running blockades in the Spanish Civil War, jumping ship in Australia and enduring the hazards of World War Two. In the 1950s, he settled down to life ashore, working in the Cadiff dry docks. The sea is his first love, writing is his second.
