Tiger Bay

The coal mining industry helped fund the growth of Cardiff to become the capital city of Wales, and contributed towards making the docks' owner, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, the richest man in the world at the time.

Butetown (particularly the area around Loudoun Square) became crowded, as families took in lodgers and split up the three-storey houses to help pay the rents.

By 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression which followed the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, coal exports had fallen to below 5 million tons, and dozens of locally owned ships were laid up.

It was an era of depression from which Cardiff never really recovered, and despite intense activity at the port during the Second World War, coal exports continued to decline, finally ceasing in 1964.

This led to a rise in commercial developments, which were largely celebrated as a regeneration, although they displaced the local multicultural community as homes were demolished.

The opposition to the development was led on the grounds of removal of communities, and ecological preservation of the mud-flats and salt marshes which were home to wintering birds.

The museum, along with other historical buildings on Bute Street, were demolished in the 1990s to make space for the Mermaid Quay shopping and leisure development.

[10] The founder, an American historian named Glenn Jordan, was certain that the centre would remain an integral part of the regeneration project, since the area was deemed to be an example of a harmonious multi-racial community.

Its rich collection of the history of the Tiger Bay needed re-housing, and the last important link for communities that had been cleared out from the area, to make space for the re-generation, was now closed.

[13] The name "Tiger Bay" was applied in popular literature and slang (especially that of sailors) to any dock or seaside neighbourhood which shared a similar notoriety for danger.

[14] During the Falklands War in 1982, the Argentine Z-28 patrol boat ARA Islas Malvinas GC82 was captured by the Type 42 destroyer HMS Cardiff.