Wayne Pritchett on Rivers and Harbours
But Newport Harbour you see was what they called a ‘Competent Harbour Authority’ and at one time don’t forget, it was the main port to the Island.
When Cowes … it wasn’t until more recent years that Cowes took over all the commercial traffic.
In the days when Newport Harbour was the main port to the Island, the vessels were smaller. In those days, don’t forget, what was going on down at Cowes was in fact the Victorian and Edwardian yachting areas.
You got all the yacht comes, the steam yachts, the sailing yachts and the boat repair yards.
And then they built what they called … when the railway came you see, to the Isle of Wight, and they built that Cowes railway line down as far as Cowes, they built that Medina Jetty I think in 1878, which was a wooden jetty which came out the river so the Colliers bringing coal from the north eastern coast, Sunderland and so on, would come up to there, tie on that jetty, unload the coal into those coal trucks and be brought up to Newport Railway Station.
Well that was pulled down and they built Medina Wharf in 1928. When they built Medina Wharf at the end of Arctic Road at the end of 1928, the coal trade was gradually dying off after the 2nd World War.
People weren’t burning coal, household coal was scarce, so they had this lovely big Wharf there, so then they decided, well, we’ll put up some tanks there to store grain. We’ll ship grain out from there in larger quantities than what Newport can do, we’ll bring in granite for the road stone from the Channel Islands and everywhere else. And the timber ships were no longer go up the river and tie on the buoys.
All the timber would be unloaded on there see, so it was only in more recent years that Cowes took all that off us.
