Welsh Country - Issue93 - Mar-Apr 20

The part of the mine which was being worked in February
1844 hadn’t been used for a while following a significant
leak of salt water through the roof. However, after it had
been closed for three years, someone decided that it was
safe to open up the tunnel again. On the afternoon of
14th February 1844, there were 58 miners working on the
shift, hacking out coal and dragging it back to the pit shaft.
They were not the happiest group of workers. They were
concerned by the entry of water and left the mine, refusing
to work because it was too dangerous. Their instincts were
dismissed, they were re-assured and sent back.
The first sign of trouble came at about 4pm when a
tremendous rush of wind suddenly shot up the shaft,
involuntarily forcing the hands and arms of those working at
the surface high into the air. Down below men were blown
off their feet and all lights were extinguished as the air was
pushed out, for water had broken in with terrible violence.
On the river itself a series of violent eddies, like whirlpools,
formed in the cold winter water close to shore as it forced its
way into the pit.
A small group of miners gathered at the bottom of the
shaft, pleading for help. Young boys were desperately trying
to climb up the pit shaft. Horses were used to haul four men
and fourteen boys up to safety in the landing tub normally
used for the coal. Nobody else managed to get out. When
they dropped it again, it came back containing nothing but
water.
It had happened so quickly. Forty miners were lost, over
thirty of them trapped at the far end of the workings. The
survivors saw that ‘a portion of the ground underneath the
mud on the side of the river, a little above the low water
mark, had given way and the tide rushed into the fissure so
as to drown the works.’ Those working on the wrong side of
the fissure, further out at the far end of the level, were cut
off.
Men descended the shaft and plumbed the water with
grappling hooks but found nothing. The Carmarthen Journal
said that the inundation ‘took place with the suddenness of a
dream, a few moments of horror and all was over.’
There was a reminder of the disaster the following day
when an explosion happened in the middle of the river,
caused by the pressure of water on air trapped deep within
the mine. Large pieces of timber were thrown into the air as
the ground expelled these remnants of the doomed pit.
What indeed was the price of coal? Disaster, distress and
destitution, for all the local mine workings were ultimately
interconnected and all were flooded, representing a terrible
loss of employment. In moments such as these, lives had
been cruelly ended and other lives changed forever.
Concerts were held to raise money for the families and
contributions were sent to the Pembroke Herald to aid
‘those poor creatures who, by a calamity of so dreadful a
character, are thus unavoidably thrown on the sympathy of
the public…sad indeed the condition of those who, by such
a stroke, are at once deprived of everything.’ The Queen
sent £20 to the fund and, though other contributions were
by necessity much more modest, by April the amount raised
was in excess of £364, the equivalent of over £20,000 today.
Ty Mawr (Big House/Landshipping House), Pembrokeshire
8
www.welshcountry.co.uk