Welsh Journals

succeeded in attracting some attention. As a result Insole was able to enter into a contract to supply Messrs. Wood and Company, London coal sellers, with three thousand tons a year of Waunwyllt coal after 1831.1 It is largely on the basis of this transaction that Lucy Thomas has been dubbed the 'Mother of the Welsh Steam Coal Trade'. 2 It may be ungallant at this stage to dispute her claim to this title. It is, however, at least doubtful whether she had assumed control of the business as early as 1830 because at that time Insole still directed letters to Robert Thomas and it was not until 1835 that the account with the Glamorganshire Canal was transferred from Robert to Lucy Thomas.3 Moreover the financial risk for the first shipment was taken by George Insole which suggests that the initiative in sending it was also his. Wherever the credit lies, however, the significant point is that the entry into the London market marked a crucial expansion in the horizon of the Cardiff coal trade. The process once started was cumulative since the use of Welsh coal by the tiny steamers plying the Thames brought it into wider notice. In 1831 Insole bunkered H.M. Steamer 'St. Pierre' with Merthyr coal and sent a cargo to Malta. A year later, referring to the London market, Insole wrote' I am sure that if I could have obtained five times the quantity I could have sold every ton there', and in 1833, that 'much of this Merthyr coal is used by Government Steam Packets at Woolwich and is found to answer extremely well'. The later predominance of Cardiff in the steam coal trade has led to the ten- dency to treat the early stages of the rise of the trade in this region as if they marked the original and outstanding effort to win a market for the steam coals of South Wales. To some extent this is misleading. Cardiff remained a minor source of steam coal till the Aberdare valley began to be opened out during the 1840s. Until 1840 Lucy Thomas's Merthyr coal was almost the only steam coal shipped from Cardiff, where the trade continued to be dominated by the house coals of Walter Coffin from Dinas and Thomas Powell from Gelligaer. 4 The really spirited attempts to expand the market before 1840 came not so much from Cardiff but from the coal proprietors around Swansea and Llanelly. In 1824, six years before the first cargo of Merthyr coal had been dispatched, the Llangennech Company, for example, had entered the London steam coal market.5 In 1832, only three thousand seven hundred and sixty tons out of a total of thirty-eight thousand six hundred and forty-four tons of coal sent to London from Wales were sent from 1 The references to Insole in this and the following paragraph are based on E. D. Lewis: The Industrial Develop- ment of the Rhondda Valleys to 1910 (unpublished thesis submitted to the University of Wales, 1940). 2 C. Wilkins: The South Wales Coal Trade (1888), pp. 72-3. 3 Merthyr of Senghenydd Deeds, doc. 343. John Nixon's account suggests that Lucy Thomas was not restlessly seeking new markets in 1840. Nixon used to relate that when he first realised the possibilities of Welsh steam coal he approached Lucy Thomas to obtain a supply. He was refused because she could sell all her present output and was afraid that if she extended her production the coal would soon be exhausted. C. F. Vincent: The Life of John Nixon (1900), pp. 108-10. Possibly legend gathered easily round the figure of a woman singular enough to operate a coal business. 4 The Aberdare Coal Company shipped small cargoes of steam coals to London from the end of 1837. (Lucy Thomas had moved from the Waunwyllt level in the early 'thirties, when the yearly tenancy was terminated, and had leased the neighbouring Graig property.) 6 Mining Journal, 20 February 1841.