During the sinking of the shaft, an explosion of methane gas occurred killing three of the sinkers. Mr. Cadman, Her Majesty’s Inspector reported:
After blasting at the bottom of the pit the place should have been examined with a safety lamp before open lights were taken down; the foreman, however, took a naked light as well as a locked lamp, no doubt believing all to have been safe, and a terrible explosion was the result killing him and two others.
The Western Mail on Tuesday 25th July 1876 gave a few lines to this explosion stating:
On Monday evening at six o’clock, a violent explosion occurred in a shaft which is in the course of sinking at Cwmcarne. Three men were killed, and several others injured.
By the following day it was able to give more details:
…the contract for the sinking was let to Mr. Thomas Brown, who has for his manager here Mr. William Ollister…they had sunk 152 yards below the surface, and this had been unattended by any accidents…the planking over the mouth had been blown up and there were sufficient marks on the framing to show the force it had to contend against…There were three shifts employed at the pit each consisting of a leader and nine sinkers…At six o’clock, after firing a shot they came up for bread, the leader of the set, Henry Atkins, Risca, and three sinkers, Thomas Jones, Risca, William Williams, Cwmcarne and Thomas Davies better known as Tom ‘Penrhiwbica’ Abercarne proceeded to descend the pit. After going down 80 to 100 yards a terrible shock was felt by those on top of the pit …it was two and a half hours before a descent could be made, this was done by Mr. D. Evans, surveyor for the company.
Evans failed to travel very far and was pulled back up due to excessive gas in the pit. Every half hour they tried to go down but it wasn’t until 4 am that J. T. Green the manager of the Celynen Colliery, C. Pond the Abercarn manager and a Mr. Howells a contractor sinking at Risca managed to reach the victims and bring their bodies up.
The Inquest on the explosion found that “the deceased Thomas Jones was killed by an explosion of gas at the Cwmcarne Pit, and that the explosion was caused by Henry Atkins going down the pit with naked lights…every precaution had been taken by the Ebbw Vale Company, and especially by their resident manager, Mr. Pond, to prevent accidents of every kind.”
It was just a few years later in 1878 that Abercarn (Prince of Wales) Colliery suffered the worse mining disaster in the UK up to that date, and the worse mining disaster ever in the Monmouthshire (Gwent) section of the South Wales Coalfield when 268 men and boys were killed in an explosion of methane gas. Rescue attempts were made from the Cwmcarn shaft and the rescuers had reached twelve bodies before the extreme danger of another explosion forced them to withdraw, only one body, that of John Lewis, was recovered from the Cwmcarn end of the mine. Due to the uncontrollable fires raging underground the whole mine was flooded and most of the 268 bodies still lie today where they died. The Cwmcarn end of the mine was then closed.
Oliver Lovell was a colliery at the colliery, he attempted to rescue the survivors by going down the Cwmcarn pit. Here is his story:
About 1pm on the day of the explosion four of us went down first at Cwmcarn. ……… We went down for about 200 or 300 yards when we first began to smell smoke and saw some dust. We found a little coal between the pit and the top of the incline. We went as far as the bottom of the incline; when we got there we found slight falls ……… We found Rees Howells’ body ………Andrew Ashman, John Marsh, and Joseph Williams went down with me in the first cage that descended Cwmcarn shaft after the explosion. I think the explosion occurred in No.4 district because men were found burnt in Michael’s heading, and therefore I think the explosion occurred in No.4.” John Marsh was both a pumpsman and overman at the Cwmcarn end of the ‘Abercarn works’ as he put it. He related “I had my attention called to the creaking of the fence around the Cwmcarn heading, or bank of the pit. I mentioned it to the other men on the bank. I heard a sound, but nothing in the shape of a great report. I saw dust and chips come up in flight, up the framing. I only heard one sound. We got steam up at once in preparation that took about ten minutes. I wanted to go down, but the engineman would not let me do so for about an hour. We first heard from Abercarn that there had been an explosion. I got a lamp……. I went down the first heading. We made our way towards No.17; there we found three bodies. Two of the men I knew, John Games and Rees Howell. There was not a great deal of fall. I could not get along there was an immense amount of thickness of fog and afterdamp, which prevented me from getting into the stall roads.”Sometime later Mr. Pond the colliery manager, having been beaten back by the raging fires at the Abercarn end of the mine tried to enter the mine from the Cwmcarn side. He descended the shaft with other men and followed the No.2 heading into Michael’s heading and on to Israel Lewis’ stall where they found Mr. Lewis’ body still in his workplace. Travelling on they found three other bodies before encountering falls of the roof. They then found five bodies in John Matthews’ road which they brought into the heading. It was then that they were met by the men sent to fetch them out and they were forced to leave the bodies and withdraw. One of the rescuers with Mr. Pond was Thomas Rees a collier who stated; Twenty of us were picked to go, and we did go down the Cwmcarn pit. I found burnt bodies down there. I went about 800 or 900 yards into Cwmcarn shaft. We carried some of the body’s part of the way outwards, and there we were obliged to leave them because a second cry came of a likelihood of an explosion on that side. Thomas Saunders’ boy was dead, David Thomas and others whom I did not know. They appeared to have been killed in a moment.
The entire rescue attempts had been defeated by the numerous roof falls and still burning timbers, gas was still gushing out of the workings at a terrible rate, and the fear of another explosion was real enough. From the Abercarn shafts the rescuers had penetrated only about 400 yards and only seven bodies had been recovered, out of the 63 pit ponies at the pit bottom, 60 were dead. Rescue attempts from the Cwmcarn shaft had penetrated 900 yards into the workings and found similar conditions before being forced to withdraw. The twelve bodies that they had found were left behind, only one had been recovered.
This information has been provided by Ray Lawrence, from books he has written, which contain much more information, including many photographs, maps and plans. Please contact him at welshminingbooks@gmail.com for availability.
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