From The Aegis & Intelligencer, March 30, 1866

Some of the coal and copper mines of England are at this time being worked in what appears to he a most singularly dangerous manner. They extend out four hundred yards (near a quarter of a mile) under the bed of the sea, and, in some places two hundred and sixty feet below the level. The beating of the waves against the shores and rocks is distinctly audible, even in calm weather when the explorer gets near the sea level. When storms arise the roar is terrible, and the boldest of men are at times afraid to work lest the sea should break through and fill the mine. Nor is this fear without great cause, for the salt water actually oozes through, and drips, impregnated with the copper ore, into the mine. Three feet of rock is about all that is left, on an average, between the mine and the sea in many galleries. A day’s work in the wrong place with the pickaxe might cause the destruction of the whole works. Indeed, in stormy weather, the salt water jets and spurts through in thin continuous streams. Plugs, sometimes the thickness of a man s leg, alone standing between the miner and the sea to keep it out. — No accident has ever yet happened, but those who remember the Thames Tunnel, twice or thrice filled with water, must feel that some day an accident is almost certain to happen. If it should, the  damage must be immense, and the loss of life great and certain. The veins of copper, however, are rich, and men will follow them to their uttermost, the proprietors of the mines feeling that were an invasion of the water to take place they could slop the leak, as Mr. Brunel did that of the Thames Tunnel, by sinking bags of clay over the hole, and then pumping out the water with their enormous engines.

The consequences, had I done so, can neither be imagined or described, but they could by no possibility have been otherwise than fatally horrible. No one can here doubt of a special interposition of God by which from calamity most terrible, hundreds of lives were wonderfully spared —Home Monthly


Source: The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.), 30 March 1866. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016107/1866-03-30/ed-1/seq-1/>