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How I Saw It
by Harry “Shipmate” Cooke
Paperback £5.99
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Book Description
Combining history and humour, poetry and prose, this book
is a perceptive insider's view of life in old Cardiff
docklands. There are stories aplenty—of Tiger Bay,
the Docks and the Glamorganshire Canal; of churches,
missions and street corner bookies; of seamen, dock workers
and the fat lady who had three sailor husands, each convinced
that she was his faithful spouse. Not all the stories
are happy: there are sad ones too. These are
lyrical tales, history as recalled through the eyes of
an old seaman, a trip down memory lane that can be read
and enjoyed by all.
Publisher's comments
This book is part of a series of community histories
and life stories written by local residents and published
by Butetown History and Arts Centre in Cardiff, Wales.
Other books in the series include:
Neil Sinclair, Tiger Bay Story (1993); Phyllis Grogan
Chappell, A Tiger Bay Childhood: Growing up in the 1930s
(1994); and Olwen Watkins, A Family Affair (forthcoming,
2004).
Author comments
I first shook hands with Cardiff as a boy seaman in
the mid-thirties. Since those days I have walked every
inch of the docklands a thousand times, from the foreshore
to the Hayes. It was magic all those years back, and
now, more than six decades later, it still is.
Author bio(s)
Harry 'Shipmate' Cooke, born in Liverpool in 1921, has
lived for some 60 years in Cardiff docklands. He first
went to sea at age 14 and spent 20 eventful years as
a merchant seaman—visiting the world's ports, running
blockades in the Spanish Civil War, jumping ship in
Australia and enduring the hazards of World War Two.
In the 1950s, he settled down to life ashore, working
in the Cardiff dry docks. The sea is his first love,
writing is hissecond.
Table of contents
1. The Docks and Solly Andrews
2. Masters and Mortals
3. Hardmen
4. Big Windsor and the Latin Quarter
5. A James Street Jaunt
6. Holy Days
7. Larboard and the Boat People
8. Medicos and Moonlights
9. Bay Ghosts
10. Bute Street Tapestry. |
