Named after the former landowner Nicholas Hobbs, Hobbs Point was built in the early 1830s to accommodate the mail and packet boats that ran between west Wales and Waterford in Ireland. This service began in 1750 and operated until 1966. The mail and…

William Haggar (1851-1925) was a travelling showman with a large family and a vision. Following his marriage to Sarah Walton in 1870, the newlyweds established a travelling theatre company and toured extensively across England and Wales. Eight of…

After the end of ship building in Pembroke Dock in 1926, the RAF set up an air base for flying boats in the disused dockyard in 1930. In 1938, they introduced the famous Sunderland flying boats to the fleet. During the Second World War, Pembroke…

The first scheduled steam packet service between West Wales and Ireland can be traced to back the year 1824. It was in that year that the Post Office replaced its sailing packets on the Milford Haven to Waterford run with steamships. The…

Pembroke Dock (Doc Penfro) and adjacent Milford Haven (Aberdaugleddau) both developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from small village settlements, Paterstown and Hubberstown, on the banks of the Cleddau river. The vast natural harbour…

'Pembroke Dock' is an abbreviation of 'Pembroke Dockyard', the new name given to the location in 1817. The Royal Navy had built the dockyard and adjacent town three years earlier in 1814, initially calling it 'Pater Yard'. The sole purpose of the…

A local story in Pembroke Dock concerns the launch of HMS Caesar, planned for July 21, 1853. The ship was a wooden two decker, screw propelled ship of ninety-one guns. As was the custom on launch days all the residents of Pembroke Dock would flock…

In 1857, Pembroke Dock was the setting for the remarkable climax of the haunting of the HMS Asp which, at the time, was used as a surveying vessel in the Royal Navy under the command of one Captain George Manley Alldridge (1815–1905). Over the…

Until the mid-nineteenth century, Japan was a pre-modern state governed by a network of powerful families and warlords led by its Shogun, isolated from the rest of the world. At that point, there was a growing realisation that China and Russia were…

A current ferry port and a former naval dockyard isn’t the first place you might think about visiting if you were interested in the history and heritage of flying. But Pembroke Dock possesses two important and related claims to fame when it comes to…