The funeral procession to the Stillwater cemetery following the disaster.
The above photo, courtesy of the West Coast Recollect history site, is of the funeral procession following the disaster, with miners coming to the West Coast by train from all over the country to attend. There was a mass burial at the cemetery in the township of Stillwater, with an estimated 6000 mourners in attendance, walking several abreast, making this procession over half a mile long.
Sadly, working men's lives came cheap in those not-so-good old days and the mining company refused to acknowledge any responsibility for the disaster and therefore any requirement to pay compensation to bereft families. It was those same fellow miners who generously dug deep into their own pockets to help out the bereaved widows and children of the men who had been killed.
Today marks the anniversary of the Brunner Mine disaster on the morning of 26 March 1896 at Brunner, a coal-mining township 8 miles north-east of Greymouth, during which 65 lives were lost, so I thought I'd share the following piece written by witness Bob Henderson. As a teenaged Post & Telegraph messenger boy based at Brunner, Bob had the tragic job of helping to identify victims of the Brunner Mine disaster (as a post office employee he knew everyone) and of delivering the many telegrams around the district informing families of the fate of their loved ones.
“A strange thing happened at the mouth of the Brunner mine that morning in 1896. Did the four pit ponies have an instinctive premonition of danger?
Brought out from the depths of the tunnel after every shift, the animals were stabled on the hillside a hundred yards directly above the entrance. They were well fed and housed and were valued at twenty pounds each. At 7.30 a.m. the groom, Paddy McInerny, opened their loosebox doors and, as usual, chased them down to the tunnel, where their young drivers were waiting to take charge.
A few yards from the gaping entrance the ponies hesitated, snorting, ears pricked. Then, defying the efforts of the lads to control them, they wheeled and galloped back to the stable. Never before had they behaved like this, and the surprised Paddy again hunted them down the hill, but before the boys could catch them they again baulked and sped up the rise.
This performance greatly amused the surface workers, as well as the miners starting to make their way underground. At length, each boy led his pony from the stable down the hill, and backed him, snorting fearfully, for a distance into the tunnel. Turning, ponies, drivers and miners together faced their doom. Sixty-five men were lost that morning, every living being underground.”
From the opening chapter of Bob Henderson’s book, "Friends in Chains". A jack of all trades raised on the West Coast, Robert Hugh (Bob) Henderson (1879-1966) was born in Reefton and married a Reefton girl. He became a well-known teamster, regularly driving supply wagons on the Buller run through the Upper Motueka Valley to Nelson, accompanied by his faithful dog, Dooley. At the age of 82 (and sill sharp as a tack), he published his reminiscences, a lively, engaging account, full of great characters both animal and human, of a world now long since passed into history, and well worth a read if you can find a copy.
Descendants of men working at the Brunner mine on that fateful day have confirmed that a few miners survived because they happened to be up top at the time of the explosion. These included one chasing his horse, which had made a frantic dash out and up the hill at the last minute, and another whose habit was to go up and sit outside while taking his break so he could read his Bible in decent light while having a bite from his snap tin.
(Note that this article was originally posted on Facebook on 26 March, 2021)
No comments:
Post a Comment