I first became interested in ships visiting the jetty when I moved to Dee View Road in Connah's Quay. At the time I was working in the Connah's Quay Power Station, but later moved to No 3 steelworks as a crane driver.

The house we moved into in 1967 was No 5 Dee View Road, this was one of three houses previously owned by Coppack Bros to house their ship's captains. [As a point of interest at that time No 1 Dee View Road was still lit by gas light]

No 5 afforded a good view of the River Dee from the cooling towers down to Musgrave's yard and with a pair of binoculars the details of the ships arriving and leaving could be clearly seen together with the cargo they were loading or unloading for Shotton Steelworks as it was their jetty about a mile away from works' General Office, on the same side of the river, but nearer to Flint.

The first ship I recorded

07/09/67: MV Olwe. Port of Registry Groningen. Owners Kamps Scheepvaart En Handlemaats NV. Loading 399 tonnes of steel sheets.

The last ship I recorded

24/09/87: MV Breezand. Port of Registry, Lemmer. Loading coils.

In the 20 years I recorded, in total, 328 ships of varying types coming up river. Notable among these were the following:

08/10/67: MV Staley Bridge. Port of Registry Chester. Owners BSC. Previous owners John Summers & Sons Limited. Unloading iron ore for the blast furnaces. On its last visit prior to being sold.

09/11/84: Marine barge delivering a debarking drum for the Shotton Paper Mill.

09/03/85: HMS Striker. Royal Navy Fast Patrol Boat visiting the Navy Cadets in Connah's Quay.

A break down of individual years shows the following ship movements:

1967, 6; 1968, 5; 1969, 1; 1970, 2; 1971, 10; 1972, 10; 1973, 7; 1974, 6; 1975, 1; 1976, 0; 1977, 0; 1978, 4; 1979, 5; 1980, 7; 1981, 31; 1982, 28; 1983, 41; 1984, 48; 1985, 33; 1986, 47; 1987, 36 until recording stopped on 25/09/87.

The reason recording stopped was following redundancy from the steelworks in 1981 and then full time education for 5 years before I graduated from Liverpool Polytechnic with a degree in law, found work and moved home.

Over the 20 years recording some notable events which occurred were the following:

With the smaller lighter Dutch coasters coming up to the jetty there were various methods of turning in the river prior to berthing at the jetty. All of the ships came up river bow first.

Just south of the power station fresh water inlet were two marker posts about 16 feet apart. The boats came up past the jetty and aimed the bows for a point between the posts. The ship then stopped, dropped anchor and allowed the stern to drift up river on the tide.

At a point when it was at the 15 to 20 minutes past on the clock face the anchor was raised, the engines were put in reverse and the ship was reversed out in to the middle of the river.

At this point the engines were put forwards and the ship steered to the jetty. Later, on the higher tides, the ships would be taken as far as Coppack's old yard and the dropping of the anchor dispensed with as the ship was directed towards the south bank, reversed out and then forwards to berth at the jetty, one nearly coming to grief in the process.

Later, with the larger ships coming up river, the marker posts became redundant. The larger ships had bow propellers which enabled them to be steered in the river and turned in their own length. One ship was even reversed up river to the jetty.

Over the 20 years the method of transporting the coils and sheets to the jetty and loading them changed. Initially the finished steel was transported by train in covered wagons and loaded by two electric cranes. This eventually changed to transportation by articulated wagons and loading was carried out by a solitary crane which I believe was an NCK rapier crane - however I am open to correction on that.

• Jetty photos