The Tynewydd Colliery Disaster

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At 4 pm, 11th April 1877, workers at the Tynewydd coal mine northeast of Cardiff had just finished their shift. Most had made their way along the dark, low tunnels to the trams that lifted them to the surface and daylight. A few lingered, finishing up.

Thomas Morgan and his sons William and Richard gathered their belongings and headed toward the trams that would carry them out. Suddenly air rushed towards them, followed by a loud roar as water surged through the tunnel. Swirling past their knees, the black water nearly knocked them down as they ran back the way they had come, picking up Edward Williams and William Cassia along the way. The five raced into a ventilation tunnel, rushing water at their heels, only to discover more water ahead of them.

The flood had trapped them in a high section of the tunnel. Water pouring in behind and before them had condensed the air so that it pressed on their ears. The water continued to rise, but slower. Thomas Morgan picked up a rock and banged it on the tunnel wall to signal their location. Fighting fear, the men prayed and sang a hymn, ‘In the Deep and Mighty Waters,’ as they waited for death. Slowly, the flood’s roar lessened and the water stopped inching towards them. Hope flared, and they took up their tools and began to dig up toward the passageway overhead.

High above, the homeward-bound miners had been summoned back to the mine. When roll was called, 14 names went unanswered. Relatives and officials began to gather at the pit head as word spread.

The first men to re-enter the mine found the main tunnel dry. They advanced slowly, hammering on the walls and calling out, then pausing to listen for an answer. Groaning timbers and metal trams banging around in the flood made listening difficult. Then they hear the unmistakable sound of a pick striking rock. Tapping back, they heard men singing. The prayer of the five trapped men had been heard. However, 36 feet of coal separated them from their rescuers. Working in four-man shifts — two to dig, two to remove rock — the adrenaline-spiked rescuers carved a three-foot-high tunnel and managed to reduce the intervening rock to a thin wall by early the next morning.

By now the men could easily hear each other’s voices. The rescue team shouted for the trapped miners to stand back as they prepared to cut through the barrier. But young William Morgan, desperate to free himself, broke through the wall first. With a huge boom, the compressed air rushed out, spraying the rescue party with debris and sucking William’s head into the breach. He died instantly.

His head had completely plugged the hole. The rescue party drilled small holes in the wall to release more of the pressure until the young man’s father could pull his dead son back. Then they enlarged the opening to free the rest.

Frantic digging had also taken place in another part of the mine that night. Escaping air hissing up from faults in the rock drew the rescuers’ attention, and they heard signals below. They quickly sank another shaft, but the signals stopped during the night, and when rescuers broke through, the cavity was full of water. Edward Williams and 13-year-old Robert Rogers had drowned as the escaping air allowed water to rise and engulf them.

Half of the miners were now accounted for. Seven remained missing.

Officials determined that the source of the water was a nearby mine, abandoned when it was flooded. Its water level had fallen 76 feet, leaving no doubt. Tynewydd miners had worked much closer to the abandoned mine than engineers realized, and officials had ignored reports of water seepage, a harbinger of the flood.

Pumps were brought in to help empty Tynewydd, but at the rate the pumps removed water, the trapped miners would starve before they were rescued. Early Saturday morning, divers arrived from London by special train. They carefully threaded their way past waterborne trams and debris but failed to reach the trapped man and had to make their hazardous return journey with a message of failure.

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