NATURE 



569 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1S82 



A HISTORY OF COAL MINING 

 A History 0/ Coal Mining in Great Britain. By Robert 

 L. Galloway, Author of " The Steam-Engine and its 

 Inventors." (London: Macmillan and Co. , 1882.) 



THIS unpretentious little volume of 273 pages contains 

 a vastly greater amount of information of a useful 

 and varied character than might at first sight be expected, 

 and its author has evidently taken pains to collect the 

 ■whole of his data from authentic and original sources. 

 He has also succeeded to an eminent degree in welding 

 them together into a concise, clearly written, and in- 

 tensely interesting narrative. The twenty-three chapters 

 into which the work is divided partly serve the purpose 

 of marking more or less distinct epochs in the history of 

 mining, partly pave the way for introducing accounts of 

 inventions which have owed their origin to its ever- 

 growing necessities. Prominent among these are the 

 railway and the steam-engine, both of which were born 

 and fostered amongst the coalmines of Great Britain 

 more than a hundred years before they began to revo- 

 lutionise the world. 



It would appear from Mr. Galloway's account that coal 

 first began to be used as a fuel in some localities about 

 the beginning of the thirteenth century. Much objection 

 was raise 1 against its introduction into London on the 

 plea that its smoke was an intolerable nuisance. This 

 opposition was continued for nearly two hundred years in 

 some quarters, but was at last obliged to give way before 

 the growing scarcity of timber. Towards the beginning 

 of the fourteenth century many shallow collieries were 

 opened out in the neighbourhood of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 

 but little is known about the progress of our subject 

 during the course of the fifteenth century. There is 

 enough to show, however, that the demand for coal went 

 on increasing. In a petition presented to the Council by 

 the Company of Brewers in 157S we find that corporation 

 offering to use wood only in the neighbourhood of West- 

 minster Palace, as they understand that the Queen findeth 

 " hersealfe greatley greved and anoyed with the taste and 

 smoke of the sea cooles." Another author writing in 1631 

 says that "within thirty years last the nice dames of 

 London would not come into any house or room when 

 sea coals were burned, nor willingly eat of the meat that 

 was either sod or roasted with sea coal fire." 



Soon after the commencement of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury the use of coal for domestic purposes as well as for 

 washing, brewing, dyeing, &c.,was general and complete. 

 The mines were still shallow, and they were drained by 

 means of horizontal tunnels called adits, water-gates, &c. 

 Already attempts had been made to sink some of them 

 under the water-level and to raise the water by machinery. 

 In the year 1486-7 the monks of Finchdale Priory ex- 

 pended a sum of money at one of their collieries on the 

 Wear " on the new ordinance of the pump" and on the 

 purchase of horses to work it. L T nderground fires and 

 noxious gases began also to appear about this time. The 

 miners' tools consisted of a pick, a hammer, a wedge, and 

 a wooden shovel. The coal was raised to the surface in 

 Vol. xxvi.— No. 676 



some cases by means of a windlass, in others, as in the 

 mines of the east of Scotland, it was carried up stairs on 

 the backs of women called coal-bearers. In the year 

 1615 the fleet of vessels called the coal-fleet, which carried 

 the produce of the northern collieries — one-half to London 

 the remainder to other destinations — numbered four 

 hundred sail. Many foreign vessels also, especially 

 French, carried away cargoes of coal to their respective 

 countries. Twenty years later the coal-fleet had increased 

 to six or seven hundred sail, and was already regarded as 

 " a great nursery of seamen." 



After the shallower seams were worked out the real 

 difficulties of mining began. It became necessary to 

 deepen the shafts and to greatly enlarge the area worked 

 from each, and both of these circumstances entailed a 

 more or less complete change in the character of the 

 operations. Then it was that the great battle between 

 inventive genius on the one hand and natural forces on 

 the other hand began in earnest. The necessity for an 

 improved means of transporting the minerals gave birth 

 to the railway — probably about the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century. 



"Up till the year 1767 all the railways in the kingdom 

 were constructed wholly of wood, with the exception of 

 the employment of small bands of iron to strengthen the 

 joints of the rails. But wooden rails were liable to rapid 

 deterioration, and the demand for iron at Coalbro ikdale 

 happening to be slack in this year, it occurred to Richard 

 Reynolds, one of the partners, that rails of cast-iron might 

 be employed with advantage. A small quantity were 

 accordingly cast as an experiment. They were four inches 

 in breadth, an inch and a quarter in thickness, and four 

 feet in length, and were laid upon and secured to the 

 previously existing wooden rails. They were found to 

 improve the railway so much that the same course was 

 pursued with all the railways at the works. Between this 

 period and the end of the eighteenth century considerable 

 progress was made in the substitution of iron for wood in 

 railway construction." 



The inroads of water were first dealt with by means of 

 buckets, then chain-pumps, then ordinary pumps. Horse- 

 power was the common prime-mover, since wind-power 

 was unreliable, and water-power could only be employed 

 under exceptionally favourable circumstances rarely to be 

 met with. As many as fifty horses were employed in 

 raising water at some collieries. At the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century Capt. Savery tried to introduce his 

 fire-engine for raising water, but failed to do so. 



"It was at this juncture" (1710), says our author, 

 "that the miners had put into their hands the most 

 wonderful invention which human ingenuity had yet pro- 

 duced — the Newcomen steam-engine, commonly called 

 the ' atmospheric engine ' ; a machine capable of draining 

 with ease the deepest mines ; applicable anywhere ; re- 

 quiring little or no attention; so docile that its movements 

 might be governed by the strength of a child ; so powerful 

 that it could put forth the strength of hundreds of horses ; 

 so safe that, to quote the words of a contemporary writer, 

 ' the utmost damage that can come to it is its standing 

 still for want of fire.' " 



Towards the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the 

 eighteenth century Sir Humphry Mackworth invented 

 and successfully applied the process of coffering out or 

 damming back water in shafts and sinking pits by means 

 of a water-tight lining now called tubbing. He also con- 



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