I am indebted to Phil Hughes of the Inland Waterways Association who has sent me this photo of a derelict Swansea Canal barge on the Mon and Brec canal. It was taken by Ian Wright on one of his several  canoe journeys along the Welsh Canals in the late forties. Phil tells me that the barge was trapped in the pound between locks 20 and 19 when the gate of lock 19 collapsed in 1948. They were being taken all the way down to Newport to be brocken up and this was the last one. It got trapped which was fortunate for  us as Ian Wright took this shot a year later.  It remained there until the 50’s. Phil, who was the manager of the Fourteen Locks Centre on the Crumlin Arm of the Mon and Brec cana,l says that visitors used to come up to him and tell him how they used to play on it as children.

Ian Wright wrote a book about his voyages along the derelict Welsh Canals in the 1940s and early 50s and his photos can be seen in ‘Canals Of Wales’.  His account of his trip down the Swansea Canal in 1949 can be found on this website.

There are precious few photos of Swansea Day Boats but Clive Reed has written a wonderful article which pins down the exact date of a famous photo of the ‘Grace Darling’ (the last day boat to be built at Godrer Graig)  on:-

https://www.swanseacanalsociety.com/2017/09/13/historoical-update-by-clive-reed/