Recent memories of Parys mountain.

From Bill Griffiths.
In 1956 I began work as a sample supervisor with Anglesey Mining Exploration Company who were making a detailed geological survey with a view to reopening the mine. The Manager was Mr Bill Manning and there were altogether about 15 employees.
There were two underground teams, the sampling gang, to which I belonged and the clearing gang which had the task of obtaining access to and making safe fallen or flooded parts of the mine.
The clearing gang consisted of three men under the supervision of an Irishman called “Paddy”. There work was very difficult and dangerous and they fought a constant battle with Mr Manning over pay and conditions.
The leader of the sampling gang was Tommy Hughes (Lon Bach) with myself and two others. Our task was to cut yard long rock samples from the walls of the crosscuts. My role was to ensure that samples were taken from the required area of wall and not just collected from the floor.
A sample weighed 7 pounds and we were expected to cut 6 or 7 samples a day. The samples were taken to a cottage in Pentrefelin for copper analysis.
Our working day began at 8am when we entered the mine carrying lunch boxes, sample bags, hammers, chisels and acetylene lamps. We obtained access by ladders fixed to the side of the Golden Venture shaft or via the Mona or Parys Footways each a series of inclines, ladders and stone steps going ever deeper into the mine.
The geologist would have already marked out the sample area in whitewash. We hung or lamps by there hooks from a ledge and set to work.
When we were in soft rock the work was easy and we were able to linger over our breaks stretched luxuriously on a dry clay floor of a nearby stope. All the while keeping an eye on the flame from our lamps which, would flicker with an inrush of air and warn of people approaching.
In hard ground the story was very different. Every ounce of rock was won at a cost in blistered hands, frayed tempers and blunted tools.
We finished work in good time to reach the surface by 5pm. If we had access via a shaft we carried the bags of samples and tool to it and one of use remained behind while others climbed to the top. A rope was thrown down and the task of tying on and hauling up would begin. As a load disappeared the man below sheltered in a tunnel from the falling stones dislodged from the shaft side.
I always felt uneasy when left alone to make my way to the surface through the dark aisle of the mine and I frequently turned and shone my lamp behind me as though I felt the presence of someone watching from the darkness beyond the lamplight. As can be imagined, it would have been easy for a novice to become completely lost in the labyrinth of tunnels, and we were prohibited from going to unfamiliar parts of the tunnels alone.
I was told a story of one miner who damaged the burner of his lamp while going along to join his gang. He was forced to spend several hours sitting alone in complete darkness.
When his work mates finally came across him he was in a state of near hysteria and spoke of hearing strange voices and ghostly laughter echoing along the tunnels. I can well understand how those noise must have affected his tortured mind for I often heard then myself, the sounds of dripping and trickling water magnified and distorted by the peculiar acoustics of the mine.
We often came across relics of the old miners: stubs of tallow candle stuck to niches in the rock face with balls of clay which still held the impressions of the fingers which moulded it, shovels and drill irons eaten away by rust and pieces of the wooded barrows used for carting the ore.  I once saw in the dried yellow clay of a stope the impressions of hundreds of clog irons still so clearly defined that one could distinguish the marks of individual nails in them.
Some of our discoveries were of a less pleasant nature. The acidic atmosphere was free of the bacteria which causes decay, and the bodies of animals which fell down the shafts or wandered into the mines changed into adipocere, a grey suety substance. We frequently came across small mounds of it, mute witness to the sad end of a careless dog or sheep.
On one occasion the mine engineer, Mr Massey and I were wading waist deep through a flooded adit near the Gwen shaft when out progress became impeded by the head and entrails of a number of cattle, perfectly preserved in the acidic water.  The mystery was solved for me a few years later when I overheard a local butcher boasting that during the second world war he had been involved in black market meat trade, the mine shafts being used to dispose of the evidence.
The only strike which took place in the mines while I was there was a result of a long held grudge about a rule that the clearing gang had to pay for there own clay burners. The clay burners of the mining lamps were very fragile and were often broken against the walls of the tunnels and the manager decreed that the men should pay 4 pence for a new burner. The nature of the clearing gang’s work meant that they suffered particularly because of this ruling and it’s injustice had festered for some time.
One morning they declared that they would not go underground until burners were provided free of charge, and they sat on the wall outside the office for several hours until Mr Manning, in an uncharacteristic change of heart, agree to their demand.  I suspect he already knew that within a month we were to be issued with new rechargeable battery helmet lamps!
I often accompanied Mr Manning into new areas of the mine. He believed that the insuperable problem of keeping water at bay was the main reason for the final eclipse of the industry. He was convinced that the old miners had only taken the top off the egg and that rich deposits extended for thousands of feet below the surface.
I sometime hear that some mining group or other is, yet again doing exploratory work in the mines, seeking to discover if it really is an El Dorado, and I begin to wonder if the old ghosts which used to watch us from beyond the glimmer of our lights will be disturbed once again.
W.E Griffiths (Sample Supervisor 1956)

From Cledwyn Thomas
I left school in the summer of 1955 and was employed in the laboratory of The John Taylor group who were surveying the mine at the time. The lab was in Pentrefelin as you enter from the Rhosybol direction you come to the crossroads just before the sports centre, the house on the right hand corner as you look towards the sports centre is where we worked.
My work was in crushing, halving and quartering the samples so reducing them to a fine powder in order to analyse the sample. Let me explain halving and quartering:- When the sample arrived it was in a small sack as quite large lumps of rock. I passed the sample through a crushing machine and reduce the sample to the size of small pebbles. When the sample was of small enough size it was then poured on to the table in a cone shaped pile, using a length of wood, the pile was halved, and then quartered. I would then take opposite quarters and then throw away the other half of the sample. The retained half was crushed, halved and quarter to reduce size of particles and weight of sample. When the particles were small enough the process was continued using a grinding machine until I had a few grammes of a fine powder.
I would do about 20 different samples at one time. When this process was finished I would then weigh small amounts of each sample for analysis. The main metal at this time was copper, but we also did analysis for iron, zinc and tin.
I cannot remember who the people in charge of the’ lab were, but do remember they were a young couple. They left after I had been there a few months and a gent called Bill Passmore took over the lab. He had worked in Africa before Parys, I think it was Rhodesia. He was from Liverpool originally.
The work continued as before but we started looking at the water running out the mine into the lakes at Felin Adda. The amount running into the lakes was measured and analysis of copper and iron into and out of the lakes were measured.
An aside for a minute, my father was a lorry driver from Llanerchymedd and as a small child in the late 40’s I remember going with him to pick up loads of scrap metal from Amlwch railway station to dump in the lakes at Felin Adda. Some of this was scrap from the Meccano factory in Liverpool, they were drilled with off centre holes, very difficult build with!!!
Back to the lab, we tried to do some froth flotation using proper meccano pieces and this worked fairly well and I remember that when samples rich in quartz came down we tried gold analysis but only found such small amounts that several tons of ore would be needed to get two or three pin head pieces of gold.
Time was also spent in hardening chisels for work in the mine.
After I had worked there for some ten months it became obvious that the  price copper on the market was set to remain at a level, which made the working of Parys too expensive. Bill Passmore found me a job working in the lab of a tin smelting work in Bootle. My connection with the mine finished in the autumn of 1956.
Cledwyn Thomas (Laboratory analyst 1955)

From Richard Jones
I used to play Football for Amlwch and remember being in the team that won the North Wales cup in 1955. Some time prior to that I was a member of the clearing gang at Parys Mountain. Our job was to go into the old parts of the mine and clear the way for others to take geological samples for analysis.
Mr Manning who was the manager of the mine was German but our supervisors where two Canadians. Superintendent Brown and Mr Jack Web. Jack Web was the dynamite man who's beard was always dripping with Tobacco juice.I remember well the smell of Cordite when a charge was let off by him. I also remember some occasions when Jack's powder went off sooner that he had planned!
The work was not all blasting and I remember having to use both air driven chisels and good old hammer and chisels. For these were used a straw mat to protect our hands.
Jack and I were working in an adit which runs from the bottom of the Hillside Opencast close to Black rock shaft.  We had been clearing part of the passageway when the roof suddenly began to collapse. Jack and I had to run down the passageway with the roof collapsing behind us all the way. You can imagine our relief when we reached the fresh air at the bottom of the opencast.
On another occasion my cousin Bob Parry and I were working at the bottom of the calciners shaft. We were using a pneumatic clearing machine. This had a large scrapper blade that we would take to the end of a passageway. The blade would be connected via a wire rope to an air driven winch which would pull the blade back alone the shaft and clear all the debris. We would then haul the debris up the shaft.
This particular day we had arranged with Jack Web that when we got to the bottom of the shaft we would knock twice on the metal air pipe which run down the shaft to the clearing machine to tell him we had arrived. We descended the shaft and knocked twice on the pipe. We then began to disconnect the compressed air fittings. When suddenly the pressure in the lines began to increase as Jack mistook our signal as the one for starting the compressor which was on the surface. To our horror the cleaning blade also began to accelerate down the passage way towards us. Both Bob and myself had to fling ourselves into the mud at the side of the passageway to avoid being chopped by the blade.
We used carbide lamps at the time. I remember going alone down a passageway stumbling and extinguishing the flame. We were always supposed to carry matches to relight. However on this occasion I had forgotten mine.  I had to crawl back along the passageway on my hands and knees feeling for the falls either side as I went. On other occasions the lamp would go out for lack of water. If you happened to be in a dry part of the mine this might be a problem unless you had already drunk you morning tea flask and could stand the stench!
Once we had cleared out the passageways the sampling gang would come behind us and cut samples. The leader of this gang was Bill Griffiths or as we knew him Billy Costog as he lived on the area of the coast called Trwyn Costog.
At that time all of the shafts on the mountain were open. I remember going down Golden Venture shaft in a bucket and being able to walk down to the 30 & 40 fathom levels in Gwen shaft. 
Thomas Hughes was working in the Morfa ddu shaft one day when he suddenly returned to the surface ,his face as white as a sheet. He informed Mr Manning that he had seen a child's body in the passageway. The local Police force were informed and sent a man to investigate. The three of them went down again only to discover that the "body" was a large Cow's liver that had been dropped down the shaft. Probably as part of the black market in meat during the war years.
George Rowbottom was the carpenter who was responsible for making all the ladders and props that we put in to gain access to the mine. He was responsible for putting the ladders in the Parys footway. I remember going down the main Parys footway , passing over a small platform to the right and then descending down another of George's ladders to stone steps cut in the rock. The marks of the old miners hob nailed boots could still be seen on the steps. This brought us down to the water level. Mr Manning told me that there was Gold to be found in this region, but never enough to make it worth while to operate. 
Also in the same footway we cleared a small fall which allowed us to continue on to a large chamber with brightly colored minerals in the roof and a large blue lake.
I worked for the company for a few years and remember each year we would receive a crisp white £5 note as a Christmas box..
One year  a large tent was erected on the mountain and all the "Toffs" invited to a high tea. We the workers were only allowed pork pies and Brown Ale in a small tent next to the large tent. Bob Parry and I enjoyed the ale but got the sack for throwing the pork pies at the distinguished visitors in the other tent!
A few years later we were taken on by another firm who were drilling core samples on the mountain.
Richard Jones (Mine clearing gang 1950s).

From Will Hughes (Betws)
I remember my Grandfather Abram Hughes ( b 1875)  telling me of how he looked after a team of horses on the mountain. He lived in a place called Caban hearn , (Iron cabin) which was on the mountain. He was responsible for looking after the horses which were used to pull the carts around the mountain and down to Amlwch port. His son was born in 1905 and they moved to live and work at Dulus in 1919.

From Dani Roberts (Foel newydd)
I was born in the farm house of Foel Newydd just below the new Morris shaft. My Grandfather Hugh Roberts ( b1850 recorded in 1881 census as living at Foel newydd.) was a shift leader at Parys and earned 3/9 per day. He worked 134 feet below ground in the Gwen shaft. This shaft was below the level of the Quay at Almwch Port and when the tide came in the shaft had to be emptied of sea water using a hand pump, buckets and hand operated windlass.
My Grandfather's friend Dic Parry (b1857 recorded in 1881 census as living at Trywsglyn isaf)) was responsible for filling the water tank of the steam engine which sat next to the windmill on the summit of the mountain.
I can remember going underground with my father down to a spiral staircase cut in rock. You could n't go any further as it was flooded. My father used to say that the copper water was a good way of cleaning a cut. The old miners would trust the copper water to heal a wound more than a Doctor.
There was one shaft, on the other side of the road from Gwen's shaft that we called Shaft yr Cwn, because a little dog fell down the shaft. It's owner could hear the dog barking on a staging some way down for days afterwards but there was no way we could get the dog out. There was also a shaft in the fields opposite the chapel 
Many of the open shafts were filled following local rumors of Murder and worst being committed on the mountain. I  remember one rumor of  ladies underwear being found at the top of the South Engine shaft and another of a boy being shoot on the mountain and being dropped down a shaft.
At the Penysarn end of the mountain was a large valve which was opened to allow water to run down into the precipitation pits at Dyffryn adda. There were  large pits in here which they used to change the copper water into material to make made red paint
Dani Roberts (Grandson of miner )

From Idris Jones (Gaerwen)
A Great Great Grandfather of my wife, Dilys called Hugh Griffiths (b1800 d 1862) worked as a miner and also owned a smallholding called glan yr afon near Penysarn. It was in the days when a man was lowered down a shaft with one foot in a bucket by two men at the top of the shaft using a windlass. If the bucket was lowered too quickly the handle would spin out of a man's hand with fatal consequences. It is thought that in my relation's case the winch handle was released out of jealousy because of his farming activites. he fell down a 200 ft shaft and broke every bone in his body. He lay groaning  for two years before dying at home. His son John aged 10 had to start to earn a living ,which he did using his donkey and cart. One of his first jobs was to cart the coffined bodies of some of the sailors from Moelfre to Llanwenllwyfo church when their ship The Royal Charter which was ship wrecked in October 1859.

From Trevor D Jones, Carreg man
My Great Grandfather ,Griffith Roberts (1822 to 1886) lived at Ty'n Mynydd, Pensarn until he married Elizabeth of Corwas and moved to live at Corwas. He was a self taught and skillfull engineer and an excellent worker in Copper and Brass. he looked after the steam engines on the mountain.

One of his son's my grandfather John Robert (1854-1906) also looked after the windmill and engines on the mountain. He lived in Siop Cerrig man until 1897 and then moved to Mynydd Gwyn a small holding next to Corwas.

I can remember my mother telling me that one winter John was working in the Morfa du engine. It had been raining heavily so he placed his wet coat in front of the fire and closed the door. In the middle of the storm the engine was struck by lightening which destroyed both the door and my grandfather's coat. The lightening also caused a crack in the chimney which was visible for some years afterwards.

He also ran a shop and & coal business in Cerreg Man. A foot path ran alone side the shop which was used by the mine workers who lived at Llanelian,

From John Roberts, Lingfield, Surry
I was named after my grandfather John Roberts ( 1854-1916) who ran a coal business and general shop at Siop Cerreg man as well as working 12 hour shifts at Parys mountain. He did this until 1900 when the family moved to Mynydd Gwyn a small holding at Cerregman.  My grandfather was an engineer and devoted his time between the Pearl Engine house and the Windmill on the mountain. The other 12 hour shift was covered by Owen Hughes, tan rhald, Pensarn.

My Father Henry Roberts of Ty refail and his twin sister,Judith Williams of bro dawel, cerreg man used to describe how they sometimes, as children, took lunch to John Roberts at the Pearl Engine house.

Griffiths Roberts (1832 -1886) was John Robert's father. His home was at Corwas. He had 9 children who were all highly musical and formed a 4 voice choir. He was also an engineer at Parys mountain.

Hugh Jones ("Riverside")
My father Richard Jones had served on Bull Bay lifeboat for 17 years until 1926. He was a miner at Mynydd Parys and that was the year in which he had an accident in Gwen shaft. He was working on the side wall when he fell down the shaft.  He caught his chest on a nail somewhere on the way down. His chest opened up and you could see his insides. Despite being in pain he would not let a local doctor look at it. Depending instead on the curative properties of the copper water.  I remember much later when I was working in the mines that he told me never to trust any platform with nails in it.  He was right as the acidic copper water would dissolve and weaken any iron it found
In the 1950s I worked for the exploration company. The Superintendent was a man called Brown. He was convinced that the “old people” as he called them had left some copper hidden in some of the old levels. He was always exploring the old levels. If he found a hole the size of football he would crawl thought looking for copper.
I remember at the bottom of Gwen shaft there was a massive lake and we found a tin box there with a newspaper in it about the Csar of Russia coming over to see Queen Victoria.  It was mainly tools that we found. I remember Ifan Bach Owen found a wheelbarrow in a small level of the marquis shaft. He went to get hold of it and it just fell apart in his hands. Bob Parry and I also worked in the Golden Venture shaft where they first found copper. It was very deep and you could come out in the bottom of Buckley shaft.
Down Parys footway there was a big chamber with green copper in roof. There was a big ladder on way down to Marquis. It took us six week to drain it. I was going down by himself every week to check that the water level going down.
A lot of work was done at carreg las or the old bluestone area. We used to go down a shaft there and were able to walk as far as the Gwen shaft and be able to come back out at the engine shaft.
We used an air driven compressor to drill 8 foot charge holes into the rock. I had been working near calciners shaft for a fortnight when they gave me a little lad called Ifan Owen from the Bluebell as a spanner man.
Jack Web handled the explosives. He had a large “RAF” moustache, which he would twirl to a point. He was always chewing tobacco which would dribble from his moustache.  I remember one time Jack asking me to drill ten holes in a “football” pattern. Jack placed the delayed action Cordex gelignite balls and fuses. The fuses were red and blue wires.  I saw that he was not wiring some of the charges up correctly. But it was not my place to tell him that he was wrong.  Jack was ready to fire. “ Wait until I am at the foot of the ladder” I said “ Why nothing will come this way” said Jack. He set off the charge.  When the smoke and fume had cleared I remember going back and collecting three charges that I had seen him miss wire.  “ here you are, you had better have these back for next time “ I told him.
There was a big square wooden plug down in the Parys walkway. The plug had been used to drain Parys into dyffryn adda.  Jack hit the plug with a sledge hammer one morning, and the plug came out with a torrent of water behind it.  The force of the water was such that it knocked Jack off his feet.
Mr Manning was the mine manager and he had a small crushing plant at Pentrefelin. The first time I saw him was at the calciner’s shaft.  I went with him down the ladders and platforms.  At one point he stopped to look at a mark on the wall. The mark was where Will Allen’s  hand had been blown off and the gunpowder had left a silhouette on the wall. Will was fitted with a hook instead of a hand. His son still leaves in Wesley street.
Manning had maps which had been drawn by Mr Edwin Cockshut the previous mine manager. These maps were very good and even showed the ventilation doors. We would go with Mr manning and have to open up some of these doors to areas of the mine which had been sealed for years. I remember Manning telling me that they were looking for 4 minerals in the rock of the Bluestone area.
They also got bluestone from the harbour and it was heavy, you could not lift more than three lumps. Bob Parry dropped some and broke his foot. There was an old pool full of copper water from the red river where the houses of Craig y don are now. The water come down a tunnel to a water wheel which was used to cut timber
The ship yard was still going just after the war. I remember the old ship “Eleth” broke the door and went across the yard . They changed the name to “black rock”
Hugh Jones Amlwch

TG Walker (TAAS 1976 Amlwch at the turn of the 20th century)
The constant cavalcade of carts on Madyn Hill always held my attention in those early days. I could watch the procession of horse-drawn carts from the garden, the loaded ones bearing copper ore to the smelter or to the quay having an easy passage downhill all the way from the mines to the harbour, and the empty carts travelling uphill without overstraining the brawny shires that drew them. The cart wheels and the heavy iron-shod hoofs pounded the metalling on the road into powder; and in March a rollicking south westerly wind would blow, driving before it immense clouds of dust down Madyn Hill and away to the harbour and beyond to the sea. A grand sight in the eyes of an infant!
And another grand sight was presented every evening when work was done, for all the horses freed from harness were led to their pasture, between fifty and sixty of them. One man rode bareback at the head of the pack, the rest trotting in his wake and jamming the streets with their bulk. There would be the thunder of their shod hoofs on the metalling, there would be a flurry of flying manes and tails, and great snorting and neighing as they crunched past the shaking houses, with dust swirling at the rear and a smell of equine sweat and manure behind them. Thus they raced up Wesley Street and Market Street to the Square and then to the fields on Bull Bay Road now, occupied by the Golf Club or to the field where the Roman Catholic Church now stands. At the first sound of their approach, people scattered for safety lest they be trampled or crushed ; but this sort of stampede was a regular feature of the township and was accepted without protest. Indeed now, Amlwch in its heyday was a match to the Wild West!
It was a bustling place at the beginning of this century, the mining for copper had not altogether ceased and the ships still sailed into the port. Saturday nights were notoriously noisy and riotous, the taverns were numerous and crowded, and quarrelsome miners and sailors fought in the streets. Fists, feet and heads were used in the brawls, but never knives nor pistols. As a result, there would be black eyes and smashed noses and cut cheeks to be seen on Sundays, and once a broken jaw. Once, also, a fight between a father and his· son ended in the death of one of the participants. Women also fought.
Two men who frequently figured in fights and who were held in mortal dread by my generation were Dic Canaan and Bob Bach. Both were of short stature. Dic Canaan specialised in kicking, he wore sharp pointed clogs for this express purpose and was marvellously nimble on his feet. Bob Bach used his head to butt his opponents. He invariably winded them, leaving them gasping helplessly on the ground. Many, many years later, when Bob was feeble and wizened and I had lost my fear 0f him, I would pass the time of day with the old reprobate. The fighting spirit and pugnacity possessed him even then in his dotage, and he often boasted of his feats of flooring men twice as big as himself.
Only the uncouth, the foolhardy and the very brave went abroad in Amlwch on a Saturday evening: the timid, the prudent and the decent townsfolk remained indoors out of harm’s way, and the children were early abed. Yes, it is quite true that Amlwch in those days did have a semblance to the Wild West of fiction.
Of course, Saturday mornings and afternoons were far less turbulent, but nevertheless they proved quite exciting to the children, for Saturday was the Market Day at Amlwch. In the Market Hall, which stood opposite to the present Police Station, there were stalls for butchers, fruiterers, greengrocers, pastrycooks, and vendors of homespun cloth and knitting yams. Outside the hail, the carts containing the unruly piglets were ranged in a row, and in another
It throbbed with’ activity in the days of my boyhood: it was dusty, dirty, smelly, smoky and noisy. The sweetest noise was produced by a battery of caulking mallets wielded by the gang who were packing oakum into the seams between the planking of the ships on the slipways. From a distance, this pleasant tattoo sounded quite musical to my boyish ears, for it had a certain ring to it. Three youths of my acquaintance worked in shifts to keep the fire going under a huge cauldron of melted pitch which was poured over the oakum to seal the seams.~ I can see one of them now, Enoch by name, nearly as black as the pitch itself with smoke and grime, sitting on his haunches in a canvas covered shelter, and shaping the hull of a model ship with his pocket knife to while away the long hours.
There were two shipyards in the port, one on each side of the harbour. I remember schooners and ketches on the stocks of both yards, and also launchings from both yards. Today, there is hardly a vestige of Paynter’s Yard left on the west side; and the Thomas Yard is rapidly falling into ruin and decay, and used as a grubby coalyard. Yesterday, they were veritable hives of industry, swarming with carpenters, joiners, riggers, sailmakers, painters and blacksmiths, with labourers and apprentices tending them. Allied to the shipbuilding there was also a team of lusty sawyers. They operated a waterwheel to turn the circular saws that cut the planking out of immense baulks of timber, a job I watched on many an occassion, and heard too, for there was no mistaking tbe whine of the great saws.
A brewery was established close to the harbour, and nearby a paintworks managed by Mr. Phipps whose descendants still live in the town. There was also a roaring furnace situated in Pell Mell, with ample floor space in the moulding shop where railings and gates and other items of foundrywork were fashioned. Overlooking the harbour there stood the tall windmill under which I used to pause to watch the swishing sails turning before resorting to the millpond to play with flat-bottomed toy boats. My mother would tell me of the young man who was killed by lightning at this mill. He was securing the chains which manipulated the revolving cap of the mill at the very instant the bolt struck one of the sails.
Schooners and ketches thronged the harbour during that first decade of the century. Some had arrived from Chile loaded with guano, others came in ballast or with coal from South Wales and the River Dee. A cumbersome steam-driven crane lifted some cargoes, but most of the loading and unloading was winched by hand, a task that demanded prodigious strength from the men who undertook the labour. Boys of my age stole on board the vessels at every opportunity, making for the cook’s galley or the crew’s quarters in the cramped forecastle. A few of the more daring lads would scale the rigging and accept a challenge to place their caps on the truck of the mainmast, a feat beyond my capability. But I was capable of eating the occasional ship’s biscuit that a generous cook would dole out, a hard and tasteless confection needing a strong set of teeth to crack it. As a rule, the sailors dipped it into their tea or into their stew, a practice that was imperative for those with poor dentures I

John H Hughes (Now living in NSW Australia)