Boy's daring rescue in the veins below Scotland

Published on Monday 13 February 2006 07:35

IN THE wake of two American mining disasters which recently killed 14 miners in West Virginia, it seems fitting to be mindful of an early 20th century Scottish tragedy in which 19 people perished.

The most striking aspect of the Stanrigg Colliery disaster, which occurred near Airdrie, Lanarkshire, on 9 July 1918, was that seven of the dead miners were children, some as young as 14. Their bodies would not, and could not, be removed from the collapsed shaft until months later. Some would never be found.

Stanrigg was one of many mining disasters across Scotland in the 19th and 20th centuries. Forty were killed when the Redding Colliery in Falkirk was flooded in 1923. At Penicuik, Midlothian, in 1889, 63 miners lost their lives in an underground fire. And in 1959, at the Auchengeich Colliery near Chryston, Lanarkshire, 47 miners died, again by fire.

But the Stanrigg disaster stands out. It was only through the actions of hero John McCabe that many of the miners in the Arbuckle pit that day - 77 men and boys, most from nearby villages - could ascend to safety, and it is to McCabe's memory that new generations of those families exist today. McCabe was aged just 15 when his early, courageous act of warning saved many colleagues from certain death.

Of the disaster, The Scotsman reported the day after: "The moss above the workings of Stanrigg Colliery, near Airdrie, subsided yesterday into the roads, and entombed 19 men, who up to the hour of telegraphing last night were still in the pit, and no communication has been made with them."

The report continues that the 19 men caught in the coal seam, where the bulk of the material fell, had no means of escape.

Three days after the collapse of the layer of moss, which witnesses described as "making a noise like thunder", the search was abandoned amid a rescue mission hampered by flooding at the bottom of the mine and by low supplies of drilling materials.

The water had reached a depth of 8ft, 9in, which proved, according to The Scotsman, "there could be no chance of any of the men being still alive". Black damp, or a poisonous atmosphere created by the displacement of oxygen by carbon dioxide common in mining accidents, added to the likelihood that all life had been extinguished.

George Archibald, a former mine surveyor in Scotland, says the accident hurt the community: "It was very bad at the time, as there was a possibility of reaching the miners. Of course, we're talking 1918, where war-time casualties went way beyond a few miners."

About 6,000 mourners attended a religious service held nearby, with several relatives of the entombed men present.

After a difficult and protracted process of pumping air and water to clear the blocked shaft, the first body to be recovered, that of William Marshall, 31, was taken to the surface more than six weeks after the accident. The second "considerably mutilated" body, that of Bernard McAdam, 14, was recovered more than three weeks later. He had just begun work at the colliery.

The remaining bodies, save the 11 that were never found, were extracted over the following month, until the removal on 24 September of four miners, David McNiven, 17, Neil Lindsay, 16, Leslie Gilchrist, 15, and James Munro Sneddon, 14. They were found "clinging to each other in a manhole which was choked with wet moss".

The inquiry into the disaster, after testimony from the owners of the colliery, McCracken Brothers, over how much warning they had that the moss was in danger of collapse, would result in a report to the Home Office. Its recommendations would later bring the periodic halting of work at several collieries nearby, including at Whiterigg, when wet moss again was in danger of collapse.

"Legislation followed that disaster and was applied so others didn't suffer," notes Archibald, who now assists staff at the Scottish Mining Museum in Midlothian. "Inevitably, safety measures were taken as far as humanly possibly."

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Scottish Mining Museum

Though a tragedy had been sustained at Stanrigg, further loss of life had been averted by the brave actions of McCabe, of Longriggend, Lanarkshire, who three years later was awarded the George Medal for heroism during the disaster.

McCabe heard of the moss collapse when at the bottom of shaft No3 alongside two boys and three men, all of whom ascended the shaft and escaped. But McCabe, knowing that men could still be trapped, returned "a quarter of a mile" to warn men of the danger. The men escaped up a different shaft, while McCabe, unsure of the safety of his own passage, would eventually climb to daylight.

McCabe died a hero on 29 January 1974, in Caldercruix, Lanarkshire, but his legacy lives on longest through the generations whose ancestors he helped save to see another, brighter day.

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