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2nd April 1925
The Flooded Mine
Message From The King
Work proceeded during Tuesday night and yesterday at the Montagu Colliery, Scotswood, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, where flooding has trapped 38 men and boys, but small hope remains of their being still alive. Royal Engineers from Chatham, who went as near as possible to the place where the men were working and listened with the geophone — an instrument used during the war — heard nothing. At midnight the water was still rising slowly.
Mr. T. Greenland Davies, Divisional Inspector of Mines, last night received the following telegram from the King, sent by Lieutenant-Colonel G. R. Lane-Fox, the Secretary for Mines :—
The Queen and I hear with deep regret of the serious colliery disaster near Newcastle. Please tell the families of the men, whose rescue now, we fear, seems hopeless, that our thoughts are with them in their sorrow. — George R.I.
Another message was received from Lieutenant-Colonel Lane-Fox in the following terms :—
Please express to the relatives and friends of those missing my deep sympathy with them in their grief, and convey to those concerned my appreciation of the efforts made to reach the victims of the disaster. — Lane-Fox.
The following official statement was made by Mr. Davies late last night :—
The water has now reached a point about 540 yards from the shaft, and is still rising about an inch and a half per hour. The pit bottom pump has been fixed, and the cable connexions and the pipe connexions of the portable pump will be completed probably to-morrow. The pumping, therefore, cannot be begun until to-morrow.
Mr. Henry Walker, the Chief Inspector of Mines, and Mr. Davies decided on Tuesday night to obtain experts in the use of the geophone, an instrument used in the Army during the war to sound long distances. A telephone message was sent to the Deputy-Chief Inspector in London, and two experts arrived at the colliery in the forenoon of yesterday from Chatham. They descended to the five-quarter seam, which is ten fathoms above the Brockwell seam, where the water has broken in. They got to the spot immediately over where any of the entombed men might have found refuge. Upon their careful tests made at that point we regret to say that no sounds whatever were heard by the experts, who were accompanied by Mr. Foster, Senior Inspector of Mines, and were supported in case of necessity by four colliery rescue teams.
It is believed that this is the first occasion on which the geophone has been used in such circumstances. The men engaged in this dangerous task were Regimental Quartermaster-Sergeant Baldwin and Corporal Lynas, of the Royal Engineers, stationed at Chatham.
Some of the men employed by the Montagu Colliery Company assembled outside the offices of the company yesterday morning and were informally addressed by one of the company's officials, who advised them as to the steps to be taken regarding unemployment benefit. Twelve hundred men are employed at the two pits of the colliery. In view of the certainty of a long stoppage, some of the men withdrew their insurance cards, apparently in the hope of being able to secure temporary jobs elsewhere.
