Seventy Years of Tugs at Milford

Haven

  Fleets of ships have come and gone at Milford Haven, trawlers, drifters, ships naval and ships mercantile, as the economy and circumstances have changed. but one sector remains constant, the tug fleet. Vitally important, but because they were always there, they are almost taken for granted. This small exhibition about the tugs which have graced the harbour since before the outbreak of the Second World War, in words and pictures tries to capture the significant changes in the worlds of economics, and shipbuilding and operating practice, and to show what that has produced in tugs which now operate around the waterway. The necessities of war brought about the revolutionary TID tugs, built in sections in engineering shops often miles from the sea, and then welded together, sometimes by women in an industry that was overwhelmingly a male preserve. The arrival and growth of the supertanker necessitated the development of the supertug; though they never were called such - like Topsy, they just grew, almost unnoticed until we arrive at the present, where tugs designed to handle large LNG tankers are themselves enormously powerful and major exercises in shipbuilding in their own right. This exhibition tries to give a feel for the changes that have happened and the results of such.