Yonderberry Oil and Petroleum Supply Jetty

The Rebuilding of the Yonderberry Jetty, near Torpoint, Cornwall

This website (presently in build) documents the large engineering project to replace an old (1950s) jetty with a modern facility. The jetty has supplied oil and petroleum to the Royal Navy for around seven decades, although the Thanckes Oil Depot is now 100 years old having been built in the early 1920s. Apart from Google Earth satellite images, all other photographs on this site were taken by local resident, Ken Trethewey, and may be downloaded and used freely, providing the photographer's name is associated with the photos.

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Location

The River Tamar separates the counties of Devon (right) and Cornwall (left) in the two images below from 1985. HM Naval Base Devonport is situated on the east bank of the river, whilst on the west bank is found the town of Torpoint. The Thankes Oil and Petroleum depot is situated on the Cornish side of the river, to the north of Torpoint, and Yonderberry Jetty has been continuously storing and delivering fuels for use by the Royal Navy since the end of the Second World War. The second of the two images below shows the original structure with an L-shaped jetty connecting the oil terminal to the ships used for delivery and receipt. Delivery is always by commercial contractors, whilst receipt has generally been by ships of the Royal Fleet Auxilliary Service (RFA) or small lighters operated by civilian tugboat services.

Note how the commercial tanker with the red deck has three other mooring points. One is to a dolphin to the north of the jetty. Two others are to two dolphins to the south of the jetty. We will see on other pages how the rebuilding work caused all three of these dolphins to be removed.

The land for the oil depot is restricted and there is no access to visitors. This is somewhat unfortunate because contained within its perimeter are the remains of a very old dwelling - perhaps the first private dwelling in the entire locality, dating from the 12th century when it is thought a family called Pengelly first settled here.

The two images above show the new jetty built alongside the old jetty on its northern side. The plan is to remove the old jetty entirely.