Coal

Last week’s pictures of coal imported through Immingham docks to keep our last blast furnaces at Scunthorpe operative, bring home to me how much Britain and our heavy industries have changed over the last forty years. The furnaces were within days of running out of raw materials and going cold. Once that happens they are damaged beyond repair, and cannot be re-started, and Britain would have lost its ability to manufacture its own steel. The government had to step in at the last minute to save this strategic industry after the duplicitous Chinese owners, rather than buying more supplies as they claimed, had actually been selling stocks off. Goodness knows what it is going to cost us all. I come back to the economics later, below.  

We never used to import coal. In fact, we exported it. My home town owes its very existence to that. It only came into existence in 1826. 

In the eighteenth century, industrial goods from central and south Yorkshire were transported to the Rivers Ouse and Humber along the River Aire to Airmyn, and later by canal to the River Ouse at Selby. But as loads became bigger, and coastal ships larger, these twisting rivers became increasingly difficult to navigate. A new canal directly to the Ouse from Knottingley was proposed, bypassing Selby. This opened in 1826, and the brand new port and town of Goole was built at the eastern end where it joined the Ouse. It eventually carried millions of tons of Yorkshire coal for British and continental markets. Before the First World War, Goole was one of the ten busiest ports in Britain by tonnage. 

By my early childhood in the nineteen-fifties, there was an extensive network of docks, with ships trading goods of all kinds to ports throughout Britain and Europe. The town throbbed and echoed to the sounds of the ships, docks, and railways. 

Tom Puddings

Coal reached Goole by two methods. One was the canal, which used a system of compartment boats known as Tom Puddings pulled by tugs, introduced in the nineteenth century. One tub could tow a train of up to nineteen Tom Puddings, a load of nearly 800 tons. At Goole, hydraulic coal hoists raised Tom Puddings into the air and emptied them straight into the holds of ships. It made an unforgettable noise. 

One of the five coal hoists. This is a still from a short (2½ min)
Vimeo video of it in operation: https://vimeo.com/135597884

Ouse Dock in the 1930s

The second way coal reached Goole was by railway. Again, wagons full of coal could be emptied straight into a ship’s hold by crane or hoist. They could also be winched up an incline and tipped from a high-level coal drop at the dockside. 

The high-level coal drop in Railway Dock in 1988, by then disused

Coal wagons near the engine sheds, 1967

During my childhood, you could watch the hoists from close quarters. You could go almost anywhere on the docks. My dad used to take me to watch ‘Tide Time’ when ships arrived from abroad. You saw them swing round on their anchors in the river, manoeuvre to the quayside and edge into the lock. You could stand right at the edge looking down into the terrifyingly powerful turbulence from the sluice gates. You could follow ships to their berths and watch them load and unload. You saw coal wagons and Tom Puddings moved to the coal hoists and emptied into ships, and watched the ships leave the locks as the tide turned, engines pounding against the currents. Now, except for a footpath across the docks which the port authority tried hard to close, the public has no access at all. 

Reportedly, even if the steel plant at Scunthorpe is saved, we will still need to import large amounts of steel from countries like Spain, France, Germany, and Sweden to build our naval vessels, but at least it would be a start. It would be nice to think one day we will have our own electric furnaces, but as always now, we would no doubt be seeking foreign funding. We used to own all our own assets and infrastructure. Now we pay dividends and interest on it, mostly overseas. Britain, the birthplace of the industrial revolution! Has globalisation gone too far?

What I don’t understand is this. If we have to burn coal to keep our steel production going, then why do we need to import it? Ex-miners tell me, although Britain’s mines are closed, there are still mountains of coal buried beneath the ground, especially here in Yorkshire. Would it cost too much to re-open one, or open a new one in Cumbria as has been proposed? It seems to me that if you are going to burn the filthy stuff, it makes little difference to the environment whether it is imported or mined here. The same with buying North Sea gas from Norway when we could be extracting more of our own. 

I suppose in the long run, if left in the ground, it reduces what anyone anywhere can burn over the decades, but isn’t that just self-righteous self-sacrifice? We might as well use our own. It would surely be far less costly.

 

For  more about Tom Puddings (and there is lots) a good source is https://www.goole-on-the-web.org.uk/vol1/tom-puddings.html - the pdf link at the end of it is good, too.