The Walker Colliery Explosion

The Walker Colliery Explosion we can only contemplate at present as a tremendous subterranean storm. There is a shock, a rush of air, an atmosphere of flame which licks up all the dry and inflammable material in the pit ; then an atmosphere of the suffocating, poisonous "after-damp," and all is over. Sixteen dead bodies are stretched upon the pit ground ; thirty-three dead horses and mules attest the terrible power of the pent-up forces which lurked in the cavities of the coal seam. The appearance above ground was that of the eruption of a volcano. The spectators "heard the sound of a "tremendous rush of air up the working shaft, and on looking in that direction saw "steam and a cloud of fragments flying from the pit's mouth." Below, as the survivors tell us, "the first warning they had of the explosion was like the sound of a hurricane, "and its effect on themselves was to throw them violently down." The seam of coal itself was set on fire, and charred dead bodies were close to the part which had ignited. In other parts of the pit "the hewers were struck down at their work and five bodies were found in the broken." One man "had been blown a distance of thirty yards from the face "of the seam." The scene that presented itself to the exploring party afterwards was that of a wreck. "On the one hand a man lay dead, on the other was a horse on his knees, "his ears pricked up, his eyeballs still appearing to glare with fright, though he was quite "dead, and had probably been killed instantaneously by the first and only shock of the "explosion." As soon as the shock was heard men in the remote parts of "ran for their lives," but "the fire-damp "overtook them, and struck them down like a shot." One survivor, who was rescued near the pit's mouth, described the effect of the pursuing cloud, from which, unfortunately, so many others were not relieved. As soon as ever the storm was over the descent of an exploring party showed the courageous mettle of our pitmen. There is never any lack of spirit on these occasions, and the generous eagerness to save life overcomes every sense of fear. The exhaustion of the explorers upon their return to the pit's mouth only showed too clearly the danger of the mission on which they had gone.

It is only just to say that the pit has always borne a good character, and that good regulations were enforced in it. "The Walker Colliery is among the oldest in the coal trade, having been at work nearly a century, and is about the last of the famous old Wallsend collieries, all the others having been drowned out." Candles were prohibited, and only the Davy lamp was allowed. "The overmen and deputies who could use powder in blasting were men of 20 years' standing, and persons in whom the viewers felt the greatest confidence." The pit had two shafts, half a mile apart from each other — an advantage which saved many lives on this occasion. The cause which was at first assigned to the explosion was that some men at work "in a trouble" had fired shots ; but this account has not been, as yet, confirmed, and the only fact which seems to be at all established, and which throws responsibility upon anybody, is that the air of the pit was foul at the time — a circumstance which ought to have dictated more than usual precautions. It was "pay-Saturday" at the pit, and the pitmen were not employed. The pit was "laid off" till Monday, and the intervening day was only occupied in the work of "redding it up" — i.e., doing odd jobs in the airways and other parts of the workings, and putting the pit in order for the commencement of the next week. It would seem, then, that the pit was without its regular working corps, and that no extraordinary safeguards could therefore be applied in firing off shots, while at the same time the pit was in a "foul" state which especially required such safeguards.

Such dreadful catastrophes as these naturally set men's wits to work to devise safeguards and securities for life in coal mines. We are accustomed to the fact of danger attaching to certain kinds of employment, and we accept it as one of the necessary facts of society — necessary for supplying the physical needs of man. The truth is that the whole field of life has its analogies to the field of battle. In war there is dangerous work to do, and somebody must do it ; somebody must mount the breach, somebody must stop the gap, somebody must be the first in storming the intrenchment. Human life, like war, has its needs. There are physical wants which must be supplied, and the task of supplying these wants is accompanied by danger. There are many kinds of work which are attended by risks peculiar to themselves, and some of those employments which present a less formidable show of danger are perhaps accompanied by as great a loss of life in the long run as those which carry their dangerous character more in front. The workmen who make our cutlery suffer as much damage, perhaps, upon an average, by the constant inhalation of the dust which their employments create, as the collier class does by these extraordinary and casual storms of the underground world. Our mercantile marine is a dangerous employment, which is created by the wants of society, for the very food which we eat is the product of distant countries, and implies a mercantile navy to bring it over to us. The work of the collier is in the same way a work carrying danger upon the surface of it, which is created by the physical wants of man, for warmth is necessary for life. But, though we are thus accustomed to the fact of dangerous kinds of work, we are not the less shocked by these wholesale losses of life when they occur. The thought immediately arises, Cannot anything be done ? Are we to submit to an annual average of casualties as if it were a law of nature ? We ought not to do so, and the least we can do whenever such a calamity occurs is to institute a most searching inquiry into the cause of it. There are, of course, causes over which we have no control, and, unfortunately, it must be said that some of these causes are almost organic, and attaching to the very nature of the employment. In dangerous work you must have cool heads, and cool hands have an inevitable tendency to contract an insensibility to danger, and even a kind of defiance of it. The combination of courage with fear is rare, and yet natural fear is necessary as an instrument of security against danger. There is nothing contrary to nobleness in fear, which is, indeed, an absolutely essential part of our composition. But, though many causes of danger are organic, all are not, and it is of the utmost importance to discover whether a calamity has originated in any cause which is capable of alteration and remedy. It is a sad business indeed to look into causes of misfortune after the fact has happened, but the future safety of thousands depends upon it. We have had a great number of Colliery Accidents lately, and the employment of a pitman is becoming almost as sadly picturesque from its exposure to danger as the sailor's life. We hope that the discovery of the causes of accident and their remedy will ultimately reduce this characteristic of it, and render the life of a collier as safe as that of an ordinary miner.