The Express.
London, England, 1864-03-14 00:00:00

[Stamped, ld. Additiosa]

TERRIBLE CATASTROPHE AT

SHEFFIELD.

GREAT DESTRUCTION OF LIFE AND
PROPERTY.

(nom ors ows mavens.)
SHEFFIELD, SUKDAY Mom_

One of those calamities which stop for a time the
pulsation of the whole country, and fill the public mind
with astonishment wad awe, has just occurred in this neigh-
bourhood. The horror is intensified by the fact that the
accident teak plane soddenly in the deed of the sight, when
the people, after • hard day's toil, had laid
themselves down to tranquil slumber; hundreds who
had gone to rest is the full confidence that they would rise
with the light of returning day, awoke no more, their
goods, their dwellinp, acid everything pertaining to them—
nay, their very bodiee—being swept away by • mighty
flood. Far seven miles above the busy sad populous town
of Sheffield, where dwell the eons of Tubal Cain, where the
clank of the hammer and the anvil ceases not, and for 20
miles below, all through the smiling valley of the Don,
which was just putting forth the tender buds of early spring,
• mighty torrent has swept, and in one night has obaoged
the whole face of the valley into a moue of desolation
and wander such es makes the heart sink to
look upon it. Peeceful villages and solitary farm-houses
upon the banks of the Don have vanished from the face of
the earth, and nothing remain, to mark the spot when
they once stood but • long, low, brown mum of alluvial de-
posit, with here and there • loathed and branchless tree
disking up through the wade, er • solitary phis wall where
once stood a noble home. The 5e.041, indeed, for miles is
ate of uttter minibilation, and reminds us of the magnificent
description of public calamities in the Scripture; where we
are told that men did eat, and drink, and were merry, and
laid down to rest in unconscious ignorance, but the 'food
came and carried them away, and their pieces knew them
DO more. People who lived upon the high bill/overlooking
the valley of the Don, between Bradfield sod Sheffield,
when they looked forth from their chamber windows in the
early monist, could not believe their eyes. A disappear-
once stranger than that of Aladdin's palace in the eastern
tale had taken place. There were, indeed, the opposite hills
and the distant country, but where were the long white
rows of cottages, where the numerous bridges, where the
pleasant villages sad the decking mills that had dotted the
river banks ; they had absolutely vanished, and had " loft
not a wrack behind." There was not even the apparence
a ruin., which generally attends the destruction
of houses; here and there large sheets of water;
then, again, mares of brown mud, such as the
tide leaves uncovered at low water in large estuaries;
in the centre a rushing surging torrent still making it. way
an huge volumes to the adjacent town of Sheffield. AU this
destruction of life and property had takes place, moreover.
without any great alarm, without any harrowing expecta-
tion to the minds of the thousands of sleepers in Shefiield of
what slide of horror the morrow would bring forth. Yale
watchers in the night had heard with affright • dull heavy
roar, and now and again a solitary shriek, • cry for help
wheels no help could come; then all was silent save the
same dull, heavy, and continuous roar, with an occasional
mash caused by a falling bridge.
At length the huge mountain of water, which in its per
sage down the valley of the Don bad overthrown houses and
farms, torn up trees by the roots and whirled them round
and round till they presented nothing but the appearance of
scathed, whitened, and blasted trunks, drowned men in
their houses sad the haute an the fields, reached Sheffield ;
and then, indeed, the alarm among than who had not re-
tired to red in that busy and populous seat of the iron
manufacture botanic, generd, and it was soon noised about
that the flood was out in the lower part of the
town. But for hours after the little knot of
miserably poor and ill-cled people who bad been driven
by the rising of the water in the lower compartmente of
their dwellings by the side of the river to seek warmth and
shelter is the police station had given the first intimation
of the calamity no one imagined that anything more than
an ordinary Hooding of the low part of the town bad taken
place, though people were seen in the darkness of the night
hastily moving about with torches, busily engaged in mov-
ing furniture and chattels. The roar of the waters had
brought many to the bridge called the Lady-bridge. but it
was not till lookers-out in the grey dawn of the morning
discovered in the floating torrent vast tangled manses of
timber, which, striking against the buttresses of the
bridges, became piled up to a great height, sad
in the most fantastic forms, and by and by mixed with
rafters and planks, beds, mattresses, tables, chairs, dead
cattle, and oomaionally the dead body of • man or woman in
a state of nudity, did it become known that further up the
river some great calamity must have happeaed. Then, in-
deed, the consternation among the night walolaop beraw,
1.11614 tad all wu eneeild Sittene of hurry, tenor, and con-
Nita.

Still so tidings reached the people either of the extant or
the cause of the calamity, and the early dawn had expanded
into broad day before expresses came hurrying in to the
town with the frightful intelligeros that the great corpora-
tion reservoir at Bradfield had burst, and the dam
acmes the bead of the valley of the Doe had given way ;
thus allowing the millions of tons of water pent up behind
it to escape in one mad boiling cataract down the valley—
overturning, destroyiag, and swooping before it in its re-
mistier course everything that stood in its way. This
was the horrible expleastion of the great quantity of chairs,
beds, and deed cattle that came down the Don. The great
heap of trees, rafters, house furniture—a heap scarcely less
balky than the great bridge MAW—is all that remains of
whole streets of houses, and in too many cases it is all
that has yet been found of the inhabitants too. All the
way down from the dam at Bradfield to Sheffield the flood
has levelled a pathway for itself, and where busy villages
Mood there is now nothing but an expanse of slimy mad,
with here and there a dead horse, a tree barked white, end
• few mill-wheels, the only rem•ants of mills. Where on
Friday night hundreds of people slept in (mandoline, they
and their houses have gooe down the stream ; their beds
Boating on the top of the rushing current have spread
alarm, and the trustful sleepers now sleep the long sleep of
death.

The embankment of the great dam at Bradfield stretched
across the valley, and upheld a magnificent sheet of water.
In its normal state it was one of the largest dame of the
water company, and from it they were tinder the obligation
to supply the mills of the Loxley with 10 cubic feet per
nomad day and night, sad it was computed that when it
was full it would contain twenty-two weeks' supply without
any addition. At this time it wee much more than full. The
very 000siderable falls of snow and rain had poured down
such floods that not only was the dam full, but hundreds
of acres above it were submerged. There must therefore
have been a prodigious pressure of water. Bat this was not
$ll. The high wind of Friday night blew direct down the
dale, forcing the water violently against the embankment.
On Friday evening great messiness prevailed, and Mr.
GUWOD, engineer of the company, proceeded in all haste to
the plan. We believe Mr. Craves, the contractor, was
also there. As the night advanced, the violence of the dorm
continued unabated. Late passengers on the roads on each
side of the dal* saw lights on the embankment, and heard
voioss. Towards midnight was beard a dull rushing sound, as
if a mighty avalanche was dislodged from an Alpine heigh►,
sod bad buried half the valley under its weight. The last
terrible symptom was • slow sinking of the centre of the
embankmeat. Then the alarm was given with all expedition,
but ere the massagers had bees able to go more than Dome
two miles, if so math, the whole centre of the embank-
meat gave way, and the mighty waters rushed like • pent-
up sea, overthrowing its barriers, down the valley. The
means of conionaication between the two sides of the
valley are almost cut off. It is only possible to get agree
by wading, and there are few planes where it iamb to do so,
and the access to the town from either side of the valley is
very difficult. The gap in the embankment looks like a
valley aft by an earthquake through a hill. Probably
half the embankment at its deepest part is gone. When day-
light broke the condition of Wags in the lower part of Shill.
field was deplorable. Several of the streets in the neighbour-
hood had 'been fire or six feet submerged, and the height to
which the water had rises was distinctly marked upon the
walls by the long black lima. The elegise shed of the Midland
railway station was found to be five feet in slime and mud,

[TWOPENCE

in which on or two bodies win fond that hid been
washed in by the flood. The booking-office was also three
feet deep in water and slush. Many hones were demoliabed,
sad is au or twe asses the ',tale aides at streets. • It is a
singular circurestansialso, as elbowing the unabated strength
of the current for many mike, that notwithstanding the
valley after passing south of Sheffield widens condderably,
dead bodies were washed into the station at Downier.
Up to the present shoot 170 dead bodies have been re-
covered, but how many have gone down the stream, and
will not probably be recoversifor days, it is impossible to
say.

Men provided with long sticks and high boots have been
looking all day in the mud for the bodies of persons who
are lost in the river.

Where the Hillfoot-bridge formerly stood, but which
has now been washed away, there was a small
two-roomed • hlte-washed garden-house. Bare lying in
then beds, lay the bodies of six persons—father, mother,
sad four childree—wbo, as they lay, appeared to have
died without a draggle. About a dozen yards fur
Bier on is • gudeo.house, occupied by a man named
Petty, in the employ of Messrs. Steel and Gar-
land. The side wall of this cottage has been washed down,
and the massagers on the Peeistone-road, at the other side
of the river, can see the pallid, upturned faces of • man
and woman in one bed, and in the same room, but in
soother bad, may be seen the bodies of three children ;
these also appear to have died without • struggle. In •
room at a public-house, the Royal Oak, the bodies of three
children were laid, having been removed from some houses
• little below. No place has suffered more in Sheffield
than Spring-street and its immediate neighbourhood.
The water then stood more than breast high, and
the mirchief done it is impossible at this time to
calculate. The fora of the flood may be judged
of from the fact that the heavy beam of an engine
was brought down with it and thrown up at the june-
tiou of CorporatiosatrwA and Spring-street. The latter
street, in fact, is littered with furniture and other wreck.
The =maitre wall bounding the barracks on the lower side
was swept away. The flood invaded the quarters of the
sergeants, and two of the infant children of Paymader-.9er-
geant Foul& were drowned in their bed. The sentry at
the gate had the narrowest possible escape, the flood coming
upon him with lightning-like soddenness.
At Rowell-bridge, the bridge and two grinding-wheels are
totally washed away. About sixty persons were employed
here, and all the poor men's tools are carried away. One
man, • grinder, named Bradley, who was working at the
time of the flood, has disappeared. At Damtlask the corn-
mill and the greater part of the wire mill are washed away.
The only person lost here is • nerve, who lodged with a
man named Kirk. The messenger sent from the dam to
give warping of the coming danger had reached Kirk's house,
and all the family escaped but the nerds, who
declared he would not turn out of bed for any.
thing. Kirk's house and an adjoining one have disap.
peered. So Amhara) the Barrel public-house and a cottage.
At Low Bradfield, the newly-erected Wesleyan school and
eshool.house are gone. At first it was reported that the
teacher and his wife were missing, but we were glad to rind
afterwards that this was a mistake. The only loss of life re-
ported to us here was that of a child, the daughter of a
tailor named Dawson, to whose house the edge of the flood
in its might reached. The mother was rushing from the
hostas with the child in her arms, when her agitation or
some impediment canoed the child to drop, or it was knocked
out of her arms, sad, to her horror, was carried off by the
rearing water. At this place two bridges, a commit', and a
blacksmith's shop, are embed away. The house of • man
named Eloped' is destroyed, but the inmates happily escaped.
An extraordinary rise in the river at Rotherhamllwas noticed
about half-past two by Police-sergeant Ireland, who imme-
diately aroused the inhabitants sear. In a few minutes
trees, broken off or torn up by their roots, every description
of household furniture, pigs, massive beams and iron work-
carts, Sic., came floating down. The people at once com-
menced dragging out of the river what could be reached,
while others obtained bate sod towed to land the larger
fragments of wreck drifting down the middle. The body of
a woman, apparently 40 years of age, dressed in her night
gown, was got out near the flax mill, and two others, one
that of a man, and the other • girl, near the Jordan
meadows. . . .

Many jpitaoces of heroism, as in all such calamities, have
already been made known. One poor man, named M'Avoy,
in the neighbourhood of Kelbarmetreet, bore out suc-
cessively, wading himself up to the neck, a family of four
persons. Below parse. Naylor, Vickers, and Co.'s offices
in Milliards, lives an old lady who keeps the rooms. She
was heard screaming, standing ►t the cellar window, in the
height of the good, whim a bystander, a gallant fellow,
sought a ladder, and plunging it into the water below, hors
her off on his shoulders, landing her again on itTrafrits, to
the delight of those who riltiffou Uii het