ODDS’N’SODS — The advantages of underground experience

In 1949, while a student employee, I was engaged as part of a blasting crew at South Crofty, a famous tin mine halfway between Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall, England.

It was late in the shift, and we had drilled two rounds over-hand on either side of the peak of broken rock. The space between the face and the rock pile was about 4 ft., narrowing to a rabbit hole in places. My partner was to light about 12 fuses on the far face and then come back toward me. I was lighting another dozen with a splitter.

We were about halfway through when a nearby blast blew out both of our hat lamps. I managed to re-light mine, but my partner was groping around in the dark, desperate not to leave an unlighted fuse (otherwise we would have spoiled the round). By this time, the stope was thick with smoke and he had to re-cut one of the fuses that had gone out. Meanwhile, all of mine were burning fast.

Just as he reached the top of the rock pile and was ready to dive under my spitting fuses, a blast from along the tunnel blew out my lamp. We groped down the rock pile throwing rocks to where the open box hole with its plank lay ahead.

We crossed that and I had just stepped into the ladder way when our blasts went off. My fingers were squashed by my partner’s boots on the ladder rungs as he tried to get down out of the direct blast. We started counting. Did two go together, or was there a cutoff?

Needless to say, we made it; it was a moment I still remember clearly.

Working at South Crofty at the same time was A.R. (Tony) Allen, Roger Taylor and Mike Stoner. Many others who have since worked in Canada trudged the path of education in Crofty.

Tony told me the story of how he went to the bottom level one morning, to drive a stope sublevel with his partner Alan Thomas. The Cornish pump had broken down before the shift had started. There was water to waist level in the shaft station. They were told that it would be fixed before the shift end.

They waded out to their sublevel drift where they were making bonus. They worked all shift. What they didn’t know was that the pump hadn’t been fixed. As they climbed down their ladder way, there was much more water than usual.

With one carbide lamp between them, they splashed back to the shaft. Tony, who was taller by far than his Cornish partner, had the lamp. However, Tony didn’t anticipate the underwater obstacles. He stumbled, dousing the lamp, leaving them in the stygian blackness, far from the shaft. They groped along until his partner was practically swimming.

They decided to retrace their route back to the stope ladderway, then search for the ventilation shaft, with its rotten ladder, connecting with the level above. Just then, the flash of a hand lantern from above revealed the worried shift boss who had come down to find them.

All this was for 12 shillings and six pence basic per shift. We would see the sun on the weekend, providing it had ceased raining. If you got with an experienced miner, you could make a bonus. Otherwise, you could work on the grizzlies with a 14-lb. sledge.

Where did it get us? We were now veterans, not only of the armed forces, but of Crofty’s dreadful depths. When we returned to school, our underground experience would help us score higher marks. And we walked with a certain swagger, peculiar for a fresh-faced group of 18-year-olds straight out of high school.

We were veterans, with 90 shifts.

— Ronald Stokes, a consulting mining engineer, lives in Vancouver, B.C.