The Sailor's Home Arms in New Quay, Wales, 1901, later renamed the Commercial Hotel and then the Seahorse. This photo hung in the bar of the pub until at least the late 1990s, when the landlord gave me a copy.

The Sailor’s Home Arms was usually known locally as the Sailors’ Arms or the Sailor's Arms: see Passmore (2012) p43, who notes it was called the Sailor's Arms in the 1871 census. It is also called the Sailors'/Sailor's Arms in newspaper reports found searching Welsh Newspapers Online. For example: “William Jones was charged by Mary Jones, Sailors’ Arms, New Quay, with having stolen a bottle of whisky.” (Cambrian News May 16 1902.) It was still The Sailor's Home Arms in 1921 but had been re-named the Commercial Hotel by 1929. (Passmore, 2015, p.380.) Dylan describes the Commercial and various New Quay characters in his letter to Margaret Taylor of August 29 1946. It was the pub in which the altercation with William Killick started, leading to the shooting incident at Majoda, the bungalow where Dylan and Caitlin were living. See chapter 4, The Shooting, in Thomas, D.N. (2000) Dylan Thomas: A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, Seren.

Llareggub and the 1939 War Register

First published on the Discover Dylan Thomas website, September 2019

I’ve always found Llareggub’s maritime profile somewhat puzzling.

On the one hand, it’s a schooner and harbour town, as Dylan put it, whose sailors have travelled the world. Captain Cat and his crew have been to Nantucket, San Francisco and more. Dylan tells us they have sailed the clippered seas, bringing back coconuts and parrots for their families. Rosie Probert’s poem “What seas did you see” says it all. [1]

Llareggub’s seafaring profile is reflected in some of its place names. Captain Cat lives in Schooner House. The town’s pub is called the Sailors’ Arms and not, for example, the Fishermen’s Arms, and certainly not the Cocklers’ Return. In the same vein, the Rev. Eli Jenkins’ White Book of Llareggub has a chapter on shipping and another on industry.

All this makes me think Cardiganshire, a county that Dylan first visited in 1930. So then I think Cardigan, New Quay, Aberaeron and Aberystwyth. But especially New Quay, with its history of both producing master mariners and building ocean-going ships, and doing so on an industrial scale – six shipyards and over 200 vessels built. [2]

On the other hand, Llareggub is also a town of fishermen. But I’m still thinking New Quay here because of its rich coastal fishing, including lobster and crab, as well as its legendary herring and mackerel catches, often celebrated at the top of the town in the Sailor’s Home Arms.

New Quay also had, and still has, a working harbour, which helps to anchor Llareggub in the particularity of the town. Laugharne’s harbour had disappeared under silt and saltmarsh long before Dylan’s time. Ever since the 17^th century, “the incremental growth of the salt marsh deprived the town of both beach and harbour and landlocked its castle.” [3]

But all that said, I just can’t ever ignore that Mog Edwards’ wholesaler was in Carmarthen, or that Captain Cat’s boat was called the S.S. Kidwelly, the name of a town in Carmarthenshire (the Kidwelly was also the name of Captain Tiny Evans’ boat in Quite Early One Morning, Dylan’s 1944 broadcast about New Quay). Nor could I possibly disregard that Llareggub is on an estuary (“boat-bobbing river and sea”), where cockles bubble in the sand, sanderlings scamper and curlews cry. It has Cockle Row and Mr and Mrs Floyd the cocklers, as well as other webfooted cockle women. [4]

So now I’m thinking Carmarthenshire. I think Laugharne, Llansteffan and Ferryside, as well as neighbouring Llansaint, known locally as Cockle Town. And, just like Llareggub, Laugharne also has its dabs and flounders, which Caitlin harvested, squelching them up from the sand with her feet. But then again, if it’s Laugharne, why are there no herons priesting Llareggub’s shore?

All this brought me to a state of curiosity, if not excitement, about the 1939 War Register, whose 80th anniversary falls this year. It’s the only population count presently available that was taken during Dylan’s lifetime. It was done soon after he and Caitlin had moved to Laugharne, and just three years before they went to live in Cardiganshire, first in Talsarn and then two years later in New Quay itself. This was the very period in which Dylan’s ideas for Llareggub were developing, and in which he wrote both his New Quay pub poem, Sooner than you can water milk, and his New Quay radio broadcast, Quite Early One Morning. [5]

So would it be useful, I asked myself, to examine how many of Laugharne and New Quay’s inhabitants earned their living on or from the sea? And could it be interesting to compare this data with that for Llansteffan and Ferryside, two other coastal communities that Dylan knew well and could have drawn upon in the writing of Under Milk Wood?

Trawling for Data

Data from a particular year and source, such as the 1939 War Register, need to be put in context, so I’m going to start with three census tables. The four towns shown are of a similiar population size, around a thousand residents in each. Make of it what you will. Llareggub, after all, is in the mind’s eye of the listener. But, if I were you, I’d take a long, close look at both New Quay, which has the seafarers, and Ferryside, which has the fishermen. Ferryside also had the cockles, and the railway station to take them to market, but I have omitted cockle gatherers from the tables because there are many inconsistencies of enumeration, as well as a major problem of under-enumeration. [6]

In addition to New Quay’s seventy-three seafarers in the table, there were 109 others who were not at home on census night (thirty-seven master mariners and seventy-two mariners). Most of these would have been at sea or berthed in another port. Their inclusion puts New Quay’s seafaring population in 1881 at 182 master mariners and mariners. [7]

The town’s fishermen, however, have slipped through the enumerator’s net, as they had previously done in the 1861 census.[7a] None are found in the census returns of 1881 and 1891, yet in 1886 the Aberystwyth Observer noted that “New Quay boats are a better fleet of fishing boats than in any place in Cardiganshire….” Three years later, another local paper, The Cardigan Bay Visitor, noted there were fifteen herring and mackerel boats in the harbour. It also observed that although there were many fishing smacks in New Quay, their owners did not appear particularly industrious:

…doing a little painting to their craft, while others were whittling sticks and evidently having by years of hard work on sea earned sufficient to enable them to take things easy and to follow fishing more for pleasure than for profit. [8]

Such foreshadowing of Llareggub’s indolent fishermen is not difficult to find in the Welsh press. The New Quay fishermen lacked enterprise, as well as the ambition to fish in deeper water, said one newspaper. The seafaring men of the town were not used to sea fishing, said another, and “cannot wheedle even the silly herring into their October nets.” Rather than go fishing, they preferred to take holidaymakers into the bay on pleasure outings. [9]

Only three fishermen in New Quay? Not quite. Just a year later, the Cambrian News reported that the town’s fishing fleet of twelve to fifteen boats and two sailing trawlers came in every morning with good catches. As for the town’s master mariners, the newspaper observed in 1907 that: “New Quay, that rising little Welsh watering place, boasts that it has more retired sea captains living in it than any other place of its own size in Wales.”[10]

Yet again, most of New Quay’s fishermen have escaped detection. Just a few months before the census, the Cambrian News noted that the town’s fishermen were daily catching large quantities of whiting. It also reported that its fishermen were at the forefront of prosecuting illegal fishing by steam trawlers: “The New Quay fisherman...has the eye of a vulture and has learnt to be as vigilant, stealthy and merciless as a spider.” [11]

There is a dearth of relevant census data after 1911. The 1921 census has yet to be published, and the 1931 census records were destroyed by fire. Other sources of data available for this period include trade directories, such as this one below:

Of the 175 master mariners listed in the Directory, ninety-seven were resident in Cardiganshire, and four in Carmarthenshire. There were only ten master mariners listed for Swansea.

The 1939 War Register

Taken together, the above four tables suggest that, historically, New Quay and Ferryside provide the best fit with Llareggub’s maritime profile of seafarers and fishermen.

We can now look at the situation in 1939, through the Register that was compiled on September 29 that year in preparation for the war with Germany. Table 5 provides the data for New Quay, whilst Table 6 offers a comparison with Laugharne, Ferryside and Llansteffan.

Fishing boats in New Quay, 1945

It’s evident from Table 5 that, in 1939, New Quay had a significant number of master mariners and seagoing sailors, fifty-eight in all. But there was a good deal more to the town’s maritime profile; there were also three coastguards, a lighthouse service officer, a lifeboat coxswain, a boatswain and four fishing protection officers. The fish police included Dai Fred the donkeyman, aptly assisted by Mr J. Fish of Water Street and, before him his father, Mr. J. Fish. [13]

As in previous census returns, New Quay’s fishermen remain hidden within the 1939 War Register. Only two people gave their occupation as fisherman. But there were many in the town with fishing boats, who fished to supplement their savings, war pensions or income from another job. Several of the master mariners and retired sailors had their own boats, as did some of the tradesmen, including grocer Norman Evans, whose boat was aptly-named the Idle Hour. Cobbler Glanmor Rees and carpenter Carsey ‘Evans the Death’ also had fishing boats, as did Skipper Rymer of the Dolau pub and butcher Dai ‘Come Back’ Lewis.

Fishing had for decades been a part-time and often seasonal job in New Quay, but an important one. The town’s fishermen provided most of the fifteen crew members of the sail-and-oars lifeboat. It was in service until 1948, and its daring rescues sometimes made the pages of the Western Mail. [14]

The town’s boats, nets and fishermen are clearly to the fore in a 1959 ITV programme on New Quay, which you can view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpt8NgODHQY.

Table 6 below provides the data from the 1939 Register for the four towns:

The marked contrast, in the first three rows of Table 6, between New Quay and the three Carmarthenshire towns is reflected in the Register’s county tables. For example, whilst Cardiganshire boasted a hundred master mariners, Carmarthenshire with its much larger population had just eleven. What’s even more remarkable is that tiny New Quay had more master mariners than the whole of Carmarthenshire, and almost as many as Swansea and the Gower put together (37). Only three of the Swansea masters lived in the Mumbles. [15]

Ferryside still had its fishermen in 1939, but their numbers had declined since the 1911 census, due largely to the predations of steam trawlers from Lancashire and Devon ports. Even as early as 1910, a Ferryside fisheries officer had reported that “the local fishermen around the district are in a worse state than I have ever known them to be.” [16]

Ferryside also had several of Dylan’s maternal relations, with whom he had spent childhood holidays, as well as one of the pubs he liked, the White Lion. Both Richard Hughes and Billy Williams of Laugharne have described the “wild, marauding expeditions” that Dylan made by cabin cruiser to Ferryside. On the very day that the 1939 Register was being compiled, he wrote to Vernon Watkins inviting him “to go over to Ferryside and get silly." [17]

And it was certainly a good place to get silly in. Just like New Quay, there was a cosmopolitan feel to Ferryside. The railway had long brought holiday makers from the south Wales industrial belt and the English cities, whilst the sea brought boats with cargo to discharge, crewed by sailors from far and wide. Not to mention the overseas mariners wrecked on the estuary sands, who were put up in the White Lion and other pubs to rest and recover.[18]

Laugharne and Llansteffan are at the bottom of the Llareggub maritime league table, as it were. Neither had more than a handful of seafaring sailors and full-time fishermen, though there would undoubtedly have been part-timers, as well as subsistence fishing and cockling. But even cockling was in decline, as the Western Mail reported in 1938, noting that a

grave depletion of the beds had greatly reduced the landing of cockles at Ferryside and Laugharne. [19]

Not surprisingly, there had also been a decline in the number of Laugharne’s fish and cockle merchants, from thirteen in 1911 to just three in 1939. And a visitor in 1947 also lamented that the town’s coasting smacks had all gone. That Laugharne was on an estuary near the sea was, in Dylan’s time and later, of little consequence to most of its residents, except in the hard times when its cockles kept many a belly fuller than it might otherwise have been. [20]

And hard times there were, as Clough Williams-Ellis gloomily noted: “Everything had gone down, population, income, the harbour silted up, the castle falling down…” Since the silting up of the estuary, and the consequent growth of the saltmarsh, the town’s occupational profile had been determined largely by the land, not by the sea. For most of the 1930s and beyond, Laugharne was largely a poor and ill-housed working class community. The 1939 Register tells us that the town’s residents included a large number of general and agricultural labourers (67), lorry and bus drivers (19) and quarry workers (15), with a long roll-call of gardeners, roadmen, railway workers, engineers, mechanics, electricians, masons, colliers, carpenters and blacksmiths. These were their stated occupations on the 1939 Register, but many would have been unemployed, and having to walk four miles to St Clears to sign on for the dole. It was the dole, said the vicar, that kept the town going: “no other industry had ever brought so much money into Laugharne.” [21]

As for Dylan and family, they were at Sea View when the 1939 Register was compiled. Their immediate neighbours on Market Lane and Victoria Street included several lorry drivers and labourers, alongside two mechanics, an electrician, butcher, baptist minister, domestic servant and hairdresser, as well as a publican, farmer, cowman and master blacksmith. There was not a sailor or fisherman in sight. (You can view Dylan and Caitlin’s entry on the Register at this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-wR8Ia9n0JHZ8DCcmvBBSY-1B-o4T_Bh/view?usp=sharing)

The Long View

Snapshots such as those taken in 1911 and 1939, or at any census, provide valuable information but it’s useful to augment them with data gathered over a longer term. Fortunately, there are two further data sets we can examine. The first, in Table 7, is an index of 23,758 Welsh merchant master mariners, mates and engineers who were active from 1800 to 1945. [22]

It was not just Cardiganshire’s larger towns such as New Quay, Cardigan (766), Aberystwyth (658) and Aberaeron (453) that provided the men for the merchant navy. The smaller settlements also made a substantial contribution, such as Borth (401), Aberporth (202), Llanon (190), Llangrannog (170), Aberarth (59) and Llanrhystud (51). The bulk of Carmarthenshire’s 791 merchant sailors came from Llanelli (322), Carmarthen (172) and Pembrey (63).

These are the numbers of certificates issued, not the number of men. A sailor might acquire a number of certificates on his way to becoming a master. In Laugharne, for example, the twenty-one certificates were gained by ten men. [23]

Dylan’s New Quay

There were some forty master mariners, active or retired, living in New Quay in 1945. The puppeteer, Walter Wilkinson, was there in 1947 and noted that the town abounded with sea captains: “address any gentleman, not an obvious visitor, as captain, and you will be safe.” That same year, the author, Daniel Parry-Jones, observed that New Quay was unmistakably Welsh with its own Welsh dialect, but also cosmopolitan: “here were dozens of lads who knew intimately the life and ways of all the great maritime cities of the world.” [24]

Dylan had once complained about the droning of these Cardi sailors, blaming the “maudlin sea-captains” for disturbing a phone conversation in the Black Lion bar. A year later, he was more sympathetic, looking forward to joining the “gently swilling retired sea-captains in the snug-as-a-bug back bar.” [25]

The bugs had always been snug in the Black Lion. Some fifty years earlier, in 1891, a Pontypridd visitor had written about the sea captains in the “snug little parlour of the Lion…the host, Mr Patrick, is a gentleman...” [26]

His host had been John Patrick, whose family had been running the Black Lion since at least 1841. By the time Dylan arrived in New Quay, John Pat had been succeeded by his grandson, Jack Pat. There were also a number of seafarers in the Patrick family, including Captain Will Pat, who sank the Earl of Aberdeen whilst drunk, and Captain Charles Pat, but always known as Captain Pat who, in Dylan’s time, lived up the road from the Black Lion with his parrot. If all these Pats and Cats are too much for you, take a drink in the Blue Bell, a pub at the bottom of the town that was run, in Dylan’s day, by auntie Cat. [27]

Apart from these personal testimonies, there are other voices that remind us that shipping and maritime industry were part of Dylan’s upbringing:

me, Hedley Auckland, off with Dylan to the Strand, to swill beer with the sailors in The Cornish Mount.

me, Alban Leyshon, off with Dylan to Port Tennant, to sip tea with the sailors in the Arab cafe. [28]

me, Aeronwy, sitting in the Boat House, listening to my Dad’s stories about the rescue of the Paul’s sailors grounded on Cefn Sidan sands. [29]

Dylan’s family included not only the Ferryside coxswain, Capt. David Jones, who rescued the Paul’s sailors, but also two shipping agents, a docks chief shipping inspector, two coal shippers, and a docks traffic supervisor. Not to mention the two master mariners in the family, both living in New Quay in the 1940s when Dylan was there. The first was Thomas Legg. He had married Dylan’s first cousin, Theodosia Williams, in 1930, setting up home at the top of the town. The second was Thomas’ father, George Legg, who moved to New Quay in the early 1940s, after service in both world wars. He was awarded the OBE in 1943. [30]

So there you have it, Llareggub’s maritime profile in a sea shell, though you might say I’ve left out the sad bit, the end bit that comes at the beginning with Captain Cat’s dead dears, his first, second, third, fourth and fifth drowned. When Dylan left New Quay in July 1945, the town was mourning its war dead; of its thirty-one men killed in action in the 1939-1945 war, twenty-seven were serving at sea. Between them, Laugharne, Llansteffan and Ferryside lost as many men, of whom just eleven were seamen. [31]

Llareggub: A Town of Sailor-Farmers

It’s very clear that Llareggub was not just a fishing and seafaring town but also a farming community. As early as the second paragraph of the play, First Voice establishes Llareggub as a town of farmers and fishers and, just a few lines later, confirms this with a colourful reference to “the bucking ranches of the night and the jolly, rodgered sea.” Immediately afterwards come horses asleep in fields, cows in byres and dogs in wetnosed farmyards.

Then follow numerous mentions throughout the play of cows, bulls, pigs, sheep, horses, goats, fields, farms, farm boys and farmyards. First Voice tells us that a farmer drives past in a car full of fowls. Milk churns stand on Coronation Corner. Fourth Drowned wonders who milks the cows in Maesgwyn. Polly Garter loves both the farm boys and the sailing jacks, as she puts it. Mary Ann Sailors has a farmers’ almanac hanging above her settle. Draper Mog Edwards advertises “Economical Outfitting for Agricultural Employment.” In Salt Lake Farm, Utah Watkins rides cursing through his farmyard on a carthorse, whilst Bessie Bighead fondly milks the lake-eyed cows. Milk churns bell, pigs grunt and sheep cough on the clog dancing farms, and cows from Sunday Meadow ring like reindeer.

Did New Quay fit Llareggub’s agricultural profile? There were sixty-eight farmers and farm workers in the town and its rural hinterland in the 1939 War Register. [32] New Quay was their first port of call for services. They came to buy clothes, to bank money, post letters, see the doctor, attend chapel, and have a pint or two in the Penrhiwllan Inn. It was a favourite pub for local farmers and their labourers, partly because it was a venue for blackmarket trading, but it was also very conveniently placed. Both a blacksmith’s forge and a saddler’s shop stood opposite the pub, and a master wheelwright was just up the road, with a livestock haulier right next to him. In today’s jargon, the Penrhiwllan was an agricultural hub. The saddler and wheelwright in particular would have attracted many outlying farmers to New Quay simply because there were no other saddlers and wheelwrights for many miles around, not even in neighbouring Aberaeron. [33]

It was in the Penrhiwllan that Dylan and Augustus John had their alliterative exchange about Dylan being a purveyor of pornographic poetry. The pub and its small farm were run by the Lewis family from the 1930s to about 1950. There are many other reflections of the significance of farming in New Quay. For example, in the later part of the 19th century, the town also had the Farmers Arms, whilst another pub, the Neuadd Arms, was named after one of the biggest local farms. There was certainly no Cockle Row in New Quay but there was at one time a Farmers’ Row and a Mariners’ Row, the one leading gently into the other. [34]

Land and sea had long been closely tied in New Quay. Money from farmers in the town’s rural hinterland had helped fund the development of the harbour, as well as the building of ships. Some farming sons went to sea, to come back many years later to run the farms that their parents had bequeathed them. Documents suggest that farmers who owned fishing boats leased them to New Quay residents, whilst farm hands would come into the town to help with the mackerel and herring catches. So close were the ties between land and sea, including marriage, that the maritime historian, Susan Passmore, has concluded that New Quay was essentially a town of sailor-farmers:

Men with farming backgrounds seem to have had no difficulties in mingling with both worlds...From generation to generation, this tradition of a family combining seafaring or maritime investment and farming persisted. [35]

And then there’s the topography. New Quay is pressed tightly between water and meadow. The fields of Towyn and Neuadd farms, for example, were just a a street or two away from the sea. It was this feature more than any other that struck Walter Wilkinson on his 1947 visit: “The farm fields still come down to the town, and as you walk from the baker to the draper you can talk to a donkey or a horse, poking their heads over a fence into the street.”

Take a look for yourself in this aerial photo from 1954:

Before the caravans came in the 1960s, Majoda itself stood in farmland that stretched all the way to the back door of the Black Lion. The sounds around Majoda, wrote Dylan, were not just seagulls and the baying of the sea, but also the throbbing of tractors, the squealing of trapped rabbits, the songs of thrushes, blackbirds and cuckoos, as well as “naying, chucking, quacking, braying, mooing...” [36]

It may be surprising that it was here, above the crashing waves along Traethgwyn, that Dylan found the inspiration to start writing Fern Hill, but Majoda was as much in a rural and agricultural setting as a coastal one. Again, take a look for yourself, in this photo of the farmland along the cliffs between Llanina Point and New Quay. Majoda is clearly visible, the furthest white building in the image, just below the branches of the tree.

Dylan’s nine months at Majoda were the most fertile period of his adult life, a second flowering said his biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon, with a great outpouring of poems. These Majoda poems, including Fern Hill, provided nearly half the poems of Deaths and Entrances. There were film scripts as well, and a start made on Under Milk Wood. Not since his teenage years had Dylan been so productive, and there would be nothing like it again.

________________________________________

With many thanks to Griff Jenkins, with whom I have enjoyed a correspondence about New Quay that has lasted two decades, and to Susan Passmore (Susan Campbell-Jones), whose painstaking research on New Quay’s maritime history has been an inspiration. My gratitude, too, to Rod Atrill, Keith Davies and George Legg in New Quay, as well as Dr Reginald Davies (Welsh Mariners Index), Gwilym Games of Swansea Libraries, Steven John (West Wales War Memorial Project), and staff at Brecon and Abergavenny public libraries, the National Library of Wales and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Images: Aerial photo of New Quay 1954: From the Collections of the National Monuments Record of Wales. © Crown: MoD. You can find an enlargement of this photo at https://coflein.gov.uk/en/archive/6168947/details/504.

Fishing boats, New Quay 1945: Radio Times, March 1^st. 1945.

Aerial photo of the land around Majoda: Rod Atrill http://www.newquay-westwales.co.uk/history.htm.

Notes (Reading follows after)

[1] Schooner-and-harbour town: on a work sheet for the play, quoted in Davies and Maud (1999) p100. Clippered seas and Rosie Probert’s poem: Davies and Maud (1999), pp50-51.

[2] Ship building in New Quay: mainly brigs, barques and schooners. For example, some 99 schooners were built in New Quay between 1848 and 1870. Overall, more than 200 ships were built there between 1779 and 1890. There were six shipyards on the beach at New Quay, with as many smithies in the town, a foundry, and sail and rope makers. Data from R. Bryan (2012), J. G. Jenkins (1982), W. J. Lewis (1987) and S. Passmore (2012), who provides the most comprehensive account of shipbuilding in New Quay. Bryan’s book has excellent photographs.

First visit to Cardiganshire: on a camping holiday to St. Dogmaels, across the Teifi estuary from Cardigan. See Thomas (2002) p93 on the holiday and p109 on his Swansea aunt moving to New Quay in 1930. On Dylan’s visits to Cardiganshire in the 1930s, see Thomas (2000) pp40-49. For more on Dylan and Cardiganshire, see https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandnewquay/a-postcard-from-new-quay

[3] In the 1940s, the mackerel sold for just a couple of pennies each. The fish were also pickled for the winter in a large clay pot (crochan), varying in size from three to ten gallons.

Llareggub’s harbour is mentioned in Voice of a Guide Book, and by Second Voice: “ herring gulls heckling down to the harbour…”

New Quay's harbour dates from the early 19th century - see Passmore (2012) ch. 2. Dylan mentions the harbour and its shouldering quay in his radio talk on New Quay, Quite Early One Morning.

On the silting up of the Laugharne estuary, see Read and van Veelen (2021) as well as:

(a) https://historypoints.org/index.php?page=former-port-of-laugharne on the absence of a harbour/quay at Laugharne, as well as (b) https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/519122?term=Laugharne%20Castle

[4] SS Kidwelly p.4, wholesaler p.38, boat-bobbing p.34, cockles bubble etc: p.34 all in Davies and Maud (1999). Kidwelly is a town in Carmarthenshire, some 20 miles from Laugharne.

[5] Pub poem: Sooner than you can water milk (1943).

[6] The reasons for the under-enumeration of cockle gatherers are various; one of the most significant is that a woman may spend every day gathering cockles to send to market but she may appear in the census as a wife or as doing unpaid domestic duties. Conversely, the numbers of fishermen in the tables may be inflated by men describing themselves as fishermen but who were actually cocklers; this is a particular difficulty in and around Ferryside where fishing and cockling ran closely side by side. Another factor is that cockling will often be a part-time and/or seasonal job; if someone tells the census enumerator that they are a “gardener and a cockler” they are likely to be included as a gardener.

[7] Seafarers elsewhere on census night: established by counting the female heads of households who described themselves as the wives of mariners and master mariners. There were 68 masters and mariners absent from New Quay at the 1851 census – see Passmore (1986).

[7a] See Passmore (1986): “Oddly, in an area which for almost three centuries had been known for its fishing, only three men are described as fishermen in the [1861] Census.” p312.

[8] New Quay fishermen: Aberystwyth Observer, November 13 1886. The Cardigan Bay Visitor, July 3 1889.

[9] Foreshadowing: see The Cardigan Bay Visitor July 3 1889; Welsh Gazette December 26 1901 and August 18 1907.

[10] New Quay’s fishing fleet: Cambrian News August 1 1902. Master mariners: Cambrian News July 12 1907.

[11] Cambrian News, September 9 1910 and October 21 1910. Census day was April 2 1911.

[12] Searching the Register by place/master mariner should be supplemented by a page by page search of the Register entries for that place. For example, searching New Quay/master mariner will yield 19 results. But because of various errors in transcription, further master mariners can be found by a page by page search. Another factor in under-counting is that a small number of master mariners modestly describe themselves as “mariner” on the Register’s returns for New Quay but they can be found on the Welsh Mariners Index as certified masters.

[13] Dai Fred Davies was the mate and donkeyman on board the fisheries protection vessel, the Alpha. There’s a photo of the Alpha on p22 of Bryan (2012). It was in service from the 1930s to the 1950s. Dai Fred, and his Captain, Perry Evans, worked for the Lancashire and Western Sea Fisheries Committee. So did Joseph Fish and James Fish, but the name of their boat(s) is not known. Messers Fish and their wives were on the 1939 War Register and in the 1945 Register of Electors for New Quay. There is more on Dai Fred and the other New Quay fishermen in Thomas (2000), together with a photo of him on p93.

[14] See the Western Mail of February 8 and 12, and October 31 1946: “The crew of the New Quay lifeboat are all volunteers, mostly inshore fishermen with a few Merchant Navy men.”

[15] Cardiganshire: merchant master mariners 100, mariners/sailors/seamen etc 161. Carmarthenshire: master mariners 11, mariners/sailors/seamen etc 77. Cardiganshire’s population in the Register was 47,666, whilst Carmarthenshire’s was 145,227. Whilst New Quay (population: 1,048) had 30 merchant master mariners, Swansea County Borough and the Gower Rural District together, with a combined population of 141,025, had 37. In the 1911 census, Mumbles’ population was 5,299, of whom six were merchant master mariners, active and retired.

[16] Carmarthen Weekly Reporter, June 3 1910.

[17] On Dylan’s boyhood holidays in Ferryside, see https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/dylan-and-his-aunties-a-portrait-of-the-poet-as-an-only-child. See also A. Thomas (2009) pp35-36.

On Dylan’s Ferryside relations, see

https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/his-ferryside-aunts-and-uncles

On Dylan and the Ferryside pubs: see B. Hughes (1998). Richard Hughes and Billy Williams, see Thomas (2004) pp75-76 and p188. Letter to Vernon Watkins: September 29 1939.

[18] In March 1901, for example, the Australia’s fifteen crew members, mostly from Scandinavia and Russia, were boarded at both the White Lion and the Railway Coffee Tavern. They are shown there in the 1901 census, taken on March 31. The ship’s captain was so badly injured that he remained in the White Lion for three weeks. And again, in 1925, the crew of the Paul, as well as the captain’s canary, were put up in the White Lion. The report of the rescue of the Australia is in the Carmarthen Weekly Reporter, April 5 1901 and April 26 at https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3645404/3645405/1/Australia and at https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3645428/3645429/2/Australia. The report of the Paul is in the Carmarthen Journal, November 6 1925.

[19] Subsistence cockling and fishing: see Dylan’s letter from Laugharne of May 1934, for example. Cockling in decline: Western Mail August 12 1938. See also Read and van Veelen (2021) on the decline of fishing and cockling in Laugharne.

[20] Coasting smacks: H.L. David (1947) p63: “The little coasting smacks of Laugharne, now alas! all gone, were chiefly used to bring coal from Welsh harbours, but sometimes, greatly daring, they would cross the Channel to Ilfracombe or Bideford.”

[21] Clough Williams-Ellis, quoted in Graves (1994) p227. Laugharne and the dole: Richard Hughes interviewed by Colin Edwards. Hughes said: “I remember the vicar saying to me once that ‘What a wonderful thing the dole was. No other industry had ever brought so much money into the place in its whole history.’ That the dole brought two thousand a year into Laugharne.” Also quoted by Fitzgibbon (1965) p214, who was sitting in on the interview. See also James Davies (2000) pp92-93 on Laugharne’s unemployment in the 1930s and its reliance on the dole.

[22] The Welsh Mariners Index was compiled by Dr. Reginald Davies, on-line at http://www.welshmariners.org.uk/search.php. Notes on who and who is not included in the Index are provided at http://www.welshmariners.org.uk/n_contents.php.

[23] From the National Maritime Museum, and available on Ancestry.

[24] Master Mariners in New Quay 1945: From trade directories and local information gathered in 2001, including an analysis of the 1945 Register of Electors by Griff Jenkins, Keith Davies and Sue Passmore.

[25] Drones, maudlin sea captains etc: Dylan’s letter to Donald Taylor, February 8 1945. Gently swilling: in The Crumbs of One Man’s Year, broadcast December 1946. See Maud (1991) p151.

[26] Pontypridd visitor: See The Toiler (1891): “I was fortunate in having secured as a constant companion…his name was Capt. Jones [who] had interesting tales to tell of foreign parts. These tales were usually told in the snug little parlour of the Lion, an hostelry which I can thoroughly recommend. The host, Mr Patrick, is a gentleman who, for kindliness of spirit and bon homie, is 'one among a multitude’."

For more on the Patricks at the Black Lion, see http://pint-of-history.wales/explore.php?func=showpub&id=164 and Note 60 on p263 of Thomas (2000).

[27] Captain Pat (1870-1949) lived in Rosehill, a few doors up from the Black Lion. Auntie Cat: Catherine Davies. She’s in the 1939 War Register and the 1945 Register of Electors. There’s more on her in Thomas (2000) p217, and more on Capt. Pat on pp216, 229.

[28] The Strand etc: Bill Francis, Swansea Police and Hedley Auckland, a cousin of Dylan’s, interviews in the Colin Edwards archive, National Library of Wales. Arab café: Harry Leyshon, also in the Colin Edwards archive: “…there was an Arab café in Port Tennant road, and Dylan was very fond of visiting there, because he met all types of foreign sailors and foreign visitors to Swansea. They assembled in that café, and it was a very rare occurrence that you'd get any English or Welsh people in there at all, and Dylan seemed to revel going in there and weigh them all up, and try to get into conversation with them…this would be late in his life…"

[29] SV Paul: a four-masted windjammer, which foundered in 1925 on Cefn Sidan sands. See https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/dylan-and-his-aunties-a-portrait-of-the-poet-as-an-only-child/ferryside-photos.

Aeronwy, Boat House etc: see pp35-36 of A. Thomas (2009).

[30] Pilot/lifeboat coxswain: Capt. David Jones of Ferryside, who had married Florence’s Waunfwlchan aunt, Amy. His father, Edwin, had been a master mariner. See https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/his-ferryside-aunts-and-uncles

Two shipping agents: (i) William Righton, Swansea: see pp38 and 189-190 in D.N. Thomas (2003). (ii) Ken Owen of Port Talbot: see https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/his-port-talbot-aunt-and-uncles

Chief Shipping Inspector: George Williams, Dylan’s maternal father, on whom see Chapters 3 and 4 in D.N. Thomas (2003).

Coal shippers: John and Bob Williams, his mother Florence’s brothers who worked in Swansea docks, on whom see Chapters 3 and 4 as above.

Traffic supervisor: Arthur Thomas, his father’s brother, who worked in Port Talbot Docks, on whom see https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/his-paternal-aunts-and-uncles

Two master mariners in New Quay: (i) George Legg OBE, of Swansea and New Quay, and father of Thomas George Legg. (ii) Thomas George Legg, who married Theodosia Williams, Dylan’s first cousin, in 1930. For more on Theodosia and her family, see pp105-117 in D.N. Thomas (2002). George and his wife Margaret are shown as living in Daphne, High Terrace, in the 1945 Register of Electors for New Quay. Theodosia Legg is shown at Wendawel on the 1939 War Register and the 1945 Register of Electors, though her husband, Thomas George, was away at sea. You can read more on both Leggs in the Welsh Mariners Index. George and Margaret also had another son, John Edgar Rewa Legg, a Third Officer, Merchant Navy, who died in action in 1941.

[31] War dead: taken from https://www.wwwmp.co.uk/.

[32] New Quay farmers 1939 Register: 41 farmers and 27 farm workers. Includes active and retired. Rural hinterland: defined as falling within a line starting from Byrlip farm on the coast through to Pant-y-gwair near Cross Inn, then to Penllwybr farm and on to Gilfachreda, ending at Oernant farm, overlooking Cei Bach beach. All are on the OS Explorer 198 map. Most of these farms are in Aberaeron Rural District (ZHBY in the 1939 Register), including some eg Neuadd and Penrhyn and Maesgwyn, that were on the very edge of the town.

[33] 1939 War Register: the master blacksmith was Thomas Williams of Penrhiwllan Cottage, next to the pub and opposite the forge. He was the only blacksmith in New Quay in the 1939 Register. The saddler’s shop was run by David Williams of Dolawel in the town. The master wheelwright was David Thomas of Pwllglas, just two hundred yards up the road from the Penrhiwllan Inn, near Myrtle Hill. The livestock haulier was Johnny Williams of Blaen Towyn, next door to Pwllglas; he was the son of Thomas Williams, the blacksmith. All four men are in the 1945 Register of Electors for New Quay. There was a smithy on this site since at least 1868. It’s shown on the OS 1^st edition map 1868-1892. It is also shown on the 4^th edition of OS maps, 1938-1954.

Other saddlers and wheelwrights in the area: at the 1939 Register, the nearest saddler to New Quay was in Cwrtnewydd (12 miles). The nearest wheelwright was in Aberarth (9 miles).

[34] Dylan and Augustus John: see Thomas (2000) p106. Farmers’ Row and a Mariner’s Row: today named High Street and Marine Terrace.

[35] See S.C. Passmore (2012) ch. 1. Also her paper, written as: S. Campbell-Jones (1974/75) Shipbuilding at New Quay 1779-1878 in Ceredigion, 7, 3/4 and online at:

https://journals.library.wales/view/1093205/1095674/304#?xywh=476%2C77%2C720%2C657

[36] Letter to Julian Orde, May 21 1945.

Reading

R. Bryan (2012) New Quay: A History in Pictures, Llanina Books.

R. Craig (2003) British Tramp Shipping 1750-1914, OUP.

S. Campbell-Jones (1974/75) Shipbuilding at New Quay 1779-1878 in Ceredigion, 7, 3/4.

H.L. David (1947) Laugharne, in Wales, no. 27, December 1.

J.A. Davies (2000) Dylan Thomas’s Swansea, Gower and Laugharne, UWP

W. Davies and R. Maud eds. (1999) Under Milk Wood, Everyman.

C. Edwards-Jones (2013) New Quay Wales Remembered, Book Guild

H. Ellis (2014) Dylan Remembered: A Centenary Celebration, Bloomsbury

C. Fitzgibbon (1965) The Life of Dylan Thomas, Little Brown.

A. Gower (1959) Laugharne Pilgrimage, in Wales, no. 38, March 1.

R.P. Graves (1994) Richard Hughes, Deutsch.

B. Hughes (1998) The Cat’s Whiskers, Hughes

D. Jenkins (1987) Cardiff Tramps, Cardi Crews: Cardiganshire Shipowners and Seamen in Cardiff c1870-1950 in Ceredigion, 10, 4.

J.G.Jenkins (1982) Maritime Heritage: The Ships and Seamen of Southern Ceredigion, Gomer.

D. Gerald Jones (1978) Introducing Ferryside, Gomer

D.L. Jones (1969) Aberaeron: The Community and Seafaring, 1800-1900 in Ceredigion, 6, 2.

T. Lloyd et. al. (2006) Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, YUP

R. Maud (1991) On the Air with Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts, New Directions.

M. Lewis (1967) Laugharne and Dylan Thomas, Dobson.

W. J. Lewis (1987) New Quay and Llanarth, Aberystwyth.

C. A. Page (1972) About Laugharne: The Home of Dylan Thomas, Five Arches Press

D. Parry-Jones (1948) Welsh Country Upbringing, Batsford.

S. C. Passmore (1986) New Quay at the time of the 1851 Census, Ceredigion, 3,5.

(2012) Farmers and Figureheads:the Port of New Quay and its Hinterland, Grosvenor.

(2015) The Streets of New Quay, Lulu Press

S. Read and T. van Veelen (2021) The geomorphology of the River Taf Estuary as a context for the evolution of the community of Laugharne, online at https://www.simonread.info/within-the-living-memory-of-the-dead/

The Toiler (1891) Holiday Jaunt – Seaside and Country, in The Pontypridd Chronicle and Workman’s News, August 28 and September 4.

A. Thomas (2009) My Father’s Places, Constable.

D.N.Thomas (2000) Dylan Thomas: A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, Seren.

(2002) The Dylan Thomas Trail, Y Lolfa.

(2003) Dylan Remembered 1914-1934 vol. 1, Seren.

(2004) Dylan Remembered 1935-1953 vol 2, Seren.

(2004) The Birth of Under Milk Wood, in Thomas (2004)

(2014) A Postcard from New Quay in Ellis (2014)

J. Tregenna (2014) If He Were Still With Us (Dylan’s Laugharne – Still Strange) in Ellis (2014)

W. Wilkinson (1948) Puppets in Wales, Bles.

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