[lit-ideas] Places of the Imagination: "Tiger Bay"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:25:33 EDT
Thanks to J. Evans for her account of the Cardiff coastline.
She quotes my
>>I'm only suggesting that _docks_ *are* [alleged to be] dangerous,
-- maybe that novel cited by the OED, "Cardiff Dead" is, I imagine, about a
murder on the docks --
and writes
>apparently Tiger Bay was, once. [dangerous]
Aha.
There's this film -- I thought "Tiger Bay" was a song, traditional one --
with John Mills and her daughter, called "Tiger Bay"
-- I'm very interested, for (at least two reasons) in Tigers. One had to to
with Borges's obsession with the animals -- "The gold of the tigers",
"Dreamtigers" -- the book on his oeuvre, "Paper tigers" -- (The other (reason)
is
that it's the logo of a team I support).
I was researching a bit on the Cardiff coastline from this book on the
coastline of the British Isles that I've got -- and it reproduces two antique
maps
-- but no reference to 'Tiger Bay'.
It's "Sea Charts of the British Isles" by John Blake. Cardiff is described
in rather cursory terms, but then the man has to go round the _whole_ isles:
"Cardiff, the capital of Wales, was a Roman
town intially, and enlarged by the Normans.
The Welsh burned it in 1185, and again under
Owen Glyndwr in 1404".
I have quite a few books and maps on Roman Britain so should check the
toponymy there. Indeed, my favourite caption in Sellars/Yeatman, "1066 and
all
that", is a caricature of a rather big Roman immersed on a not too deep bath
("therma") which reads, "The Roman Occupation".
Blake reproduces two old maps of Cardiff on p. 75. One French, the other
pre-Admiralty. Of the first one (original in the British Library) he writes:
"Plan of Cardiff" (dated 1650), [is a French chart] The French
"were always
on the lookout for an opportuntity to invade". "The plan shows
Cardiff
Castle, built in 1091 by Robert Fitzhamon, where the River Taff
meanders to the Bristol Channel"
-- where "Taff" must be short for "Dave" (cf. "Taffy" = David).
Blake continues:
"During Elizabethan times it was a lair for pirates".
-- which I would think means "a nest of tigers".
"The Bute family saw the opportunities of the Industrial
Revolution" building a canal joining Cardiff with Merthyr
Tydfil and the city's first dock in 1839".
That's pretty recent, and thus Judy is perhaps right that Cardiff was never
really centred around the docks, but around the Castle. In a way, this was the
impression that LeCorbusier (the Swiss architect, drawn in La Riviera) had
of Buenos Aires, when he criticised the port-dwellers ('porteños, as Buenos
Aires residents are called) for 'giving the back' to the river. The docks were
built not much later than 1890, which wouldn't need to _compare_ if we think
that Cardiff was an old Roman settlement, and Buenos Aires just a remote
outpost of the River Plate viceroyalty.
Blake then reproduces "BRISTOL CHANNEL: Cardiff or Penarth Road" by Leut. H.
R. Denham (1832, UKHO (c) British Crown Copyright), a beautifully detailed
thing, and writes:
"To cope with the increased shipping, the Butes built docks,
starting with
The Bute West Dock in 1835,
The East Dock in 1855, then
Roath Basin in 1874,
Roath Dock in 1877, and
The Queen Alexandra Dock in 1907,
"with the consequent explositon of workers and hosuing adjacent,
ATTRACTING OVER 50 NATIONALITIES into 'Tiger Bay'"
[sic with scare quotes :)]
"The chart by Denham predates all the dockland
development, but with a wealth of navigational
detail that became the hallmark of the Admiralty Chart".
It is as I say indeed a beautiful chart.
So much richer than the French one, which is so vague. From the Denham chart
I can read the name of 'points' on the coastline like "Lavernock", The
"Cardiff Flats" (well, watery these), "The Island of Flatholm" (which I suppose
is
a breeding site for puffins, :)), "Sully" and "Sully Old Mill". Then
there's Lower Penarth, Penarth Church, Penarth Road, Llandough, Lockwith, Ely
River, not to mention (but I am mentioning) "Cardiff" itself with the
"Bute Ship Canal and Dock", (this possibly refers to the 'bleak' strip that
J. Evans refers to, or compares with it).
"and Cardiff Castle to the North" -- which must be impressive to visit.
Cheers,
JL Speranza,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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