Ocean Colliery
What operated Deep Navigation Colliery from 1893 to Dec 1946?
Deep Navigation Colliery Deep Navigation Colliery was a coal mine in South Wales , that operated from 1872 until 1991 . Located next to the co-developed village of Treharris in the borough of Merthyr Tydfil , on development it was the deepest coalmine in South Wales Coalfield by some . Producing the highest quality steam coal , it powered both the Cunard passenger steamers RMS Mauretania and RMS Lusitania in their successful attempts at the Blue Riband prize for the most rapid Atlantic Ocean passage . The mine is also thought to have been one of several locally that provided coal to the RMS Titanic ; tests carried out on coal found in the ships wreck have shown that most of the coal on board originated in South Wales . Amongst one of the first collieries in South Wales to have shafts wound by electricity , it was the first colliery in South Wales to have pit head baths for its miners . Profitable due to the quality of its coal , but financially degraded by huge volumes of water ingress throughout its working life , it was closed by British Coal on Good Friday , 1991 . Today the wider local site , which was also occupied by the nearby Taff Merthyr Colliery and the Trelewis Drift Mine , has been redeveloped into the wildlife and leisure park , Parc Taff Bargoed . Harris Navigation : 1872–1893 . In the early 1800s , a mineral lease was granted over of land , owned by three farms : Twyn-y Garreg ; Pantanas ; Cefn Forest . A group of businessmen , led by Frederick W . Harris , began negotiations for the rights to the mineral lease , which was eventually acquired in 1872 . Nothing existed in the area at the time , except for the three farms and their outbuildings , plus the quiet River Taff Bargoed and a small forest on the slopes above the valley . With a proposed name of Harris Navigation Steam Coal Company , development commenced with the construction a row of temporary small houses , built for the families and men who were to be employed to sink the pit . Named the Twyn-y-Garreg huts , they all had wooden frames covered by whitewashed hessian for walls . House No.1 was specially created for the Minnett family of two adults and ten children , and had four bedrooms . The remainder were classical 2 up/2 down room formation terraced-style houses , with a kitchen and parlour on the ground floor , and two bedrooms upstairs . Heating came from a coal fire placed under a stone or brick chimney stack , and the huts were completed with slate roofs . All materials for the huts construction came from locally obtained resources within the bounds of the mineral lease , including the development of a firestone quarry to the north of the colliery site . The new development was called Treharris ( Harris town in Welsh ) . Construction of the main shafts began in October 1872 , with sinking commencing in February 1873 . Due to the required depth of the shafts to access the coal seams , the operation would prove to be both expensive and dangerous , and create the lifelong operational need to continually extract water due to high levels of ingress . The 167 men of the construction crew were not paid on time on a number of occasions , with final construction costs in May 1878 running to over £300,000 , and seven men having lost their lives . The two shafts were built apart : North to a depth of ; South to . This was deeper than any other colliery in the South Wales Coalfield at the time , to allow access the Nine Feet Seam . Before coal could be extracted commercially , surface buildings were required to be completed . This included the installation of two John Fowler & Co . winding machines , and the forest fully cleared , with wood stored for pit props . Finally , the River Taff Bargoed was enclosed in a tunnel constructed of bricks made from the collieries quarry , enabling water ingress to the mine to be significantly reduced , and slag heaps to be placed on the resultant new land . The first commercial coal was raised at North pit from 1879 , and by 1881 both shafts were raising coal . But by this point the colliery company was deep in debt . The only reason that funding had been forthcoming from the shareholders , commercial backers and banks was due to the potential high quality of the coal that could be extracted , and so it proved . The depth of the shafts and the quality of the steam coal extracted hence earned the colliery two nicknames in the South Wales coalfield : Deep Navigation and Ocean Colliery . Water ingress . Due to shaft depth , the major problem with the mine throughout its life was water ingress , with a reported maximum ingress during its operational life of entering the pit every minute . After the first commercial coal was extracted in 1879 , the colliery started construction of Cornish Beam engine , capable of extracting over a stroke . Supplied by the Perran Foundry of Truro , water was lifted in stages to different levels , until it reached the surface and was dispersed into pit pond located north of the colliery . Later , mine engineer Castell created the famous Deep Navigation “Castle.” A man-made cavern hewn by hand from solid rock , it was built to store water for removal . Located adjacent to the North pit shaft , it was long , wide and high . Inside was installed an electric sump pump , which connected to a surface pipe that spilled into the same pit pond as the beam engine . Ocean Colliery : 1893–1947 . Industrialist businessman David Davies of Llandinam , became interested in the Harris mine as early as 1890 . By this time , almost 1million tonnes of coal had been raised , but by 1892 there was a dip in production . With debts rising , Harris allowed an inspection of the mine by Davies , whose engineers reported that were good reserves of coal in a mine that required relatively little additional investment . Daviess Ocean Coal Company took ownership of the colliery on 17 January 1893 , and renamed it Ocean Colliery . There was great competition at the time between colliery owners , with most trying to prove to potential purchasers that their coal was of the best quality . At the time this was signified by being selected by the Royal Navy , and the various transatlantic ocean liners , including the Cunard Line ; hence the choice of the renaming . Davies invested in the colliery , including repairing the bases of the shafts . From 1897 onwards , the colliery was producing over 590,000 tons per year with a workforce of 2,500 miners . Ocean Company invested a further £500,000 in 1900 to make the collieries production more economic , so that by 1902 , annual output was 327,000 tons by 2,000 men . The steam coal produced during this period was purchased for use by the Cunard steamers RMS Mauretania and RMS Lusitania , used in their successful attempts for the Blue Riband for the most rapid Atlantic passage . The South Wales Miners Federation had been formed in 1894 , and in 1910 and 1911 the Tonypandy riots had occurred to improve miners incomes and working conditions . By 1913 , the workforce had shrunk to 1,846 men and boys . At this time Deep Navigation had an extensive underground mine railway , with of underground railways . Over 100 pit ponies were being used at the colliery , mostly underground , but some on the surface . Pit head baths . In 1913 , Davies sent a party of 15 men to the continent to investigate European systems of working practice . As a result of their report , a sum of £8,000 was authorised to build new baths for the miners . The new Treharris baths were constructed by Nicholls & Nicholls of Gloucester , that could accommodate 1,824 men at a time , who were each provided with two lockers : one for clean and the other for dirty clothes . Officially opened on 1 November 1933 by Ocean Coal Company director Thomas Evans O.B.E . of Pentyrch , the baths were the first such facility in South Wales . Having constructed a new power house , which was also supplying Lady Windsor Colliery , the facility was electrically lit , and included an early electric shoe cleaner . The baths were reconstructed in 1933 , by which time Ocean had provided baths at Risca , Wattstown , Lady Windsor , Garw , Nantymeol and Nine mile point collieries . After World War I . After supplying the Royal Navy during World War I , by 1920 the colliery was using the “Barry of Nottingham” system of coal cutting , a forerunner of longwall mining . From a 1923 report by HM Inspectorate of Mines , there were 2,328 men employed , working the Seven Feet , Yard and Nine Feet seams . But by the time of the 1926 General Strike , industrial relations had again broken down . The village of Treharris was staunchly socialist , and was innovative in using the colliery band and local jazz music Treharris Zulus group to raise funds . But by the new year the families were running short of funds , food and fuel , and the workers quickly returned to work . By 1935 , the colliery employed 363 men on the surface and 1,875 underground . At the start of World War II , Ernest Bevin introduced a new law that tied the miners to their reserved occupation . Bevin also ordered one in ten young men of eighteen years of age to be employed in the coal industry , with some of the Bevin boys coming to the Treharris area . Deep Navigation : 1947–1991 . By 1945 there were 1,826 men working at the complex . After nationalisation in 1947 , the colliery was finally named Deep Navigation by the National Coal Board . The NCB made various investments in the colliery , and the fact that the Westminster government was a Clement Attlee-led Labour government , made industrial relations smoother . Investments included the demolition in the mid-1950s of the original 1870 Twyn-y-Garreg huts , but the site remained dormant almost until the colliery closed , when the new Navigation Street was built . By 1960 , this investment had resulted in the workforce dropping to just over 1,000 miners . Being located close , the colliery stopped working on announcement of the Aberfan disaster on Friday 21 October 1966 , sending all available manpower to the recovery effort . As a result , a few children were pulled out alive in the first hour , but no survivors were found after 11 a.m . that day . The last pit pony was retired in 1973 , at the time when the colliery won the first of its contracts to supply Aberthaw power station . The centenary celebrations of 1979 saw over 2,000 people descend to pit bottom , with weekly production at around 8,500 tonnes/week . A decade of industrial decline . After an investment in a new canteen in 1982 , and a confirmed £6 million investment in 1983 in a new high-speed conveyor extraction system installed , the 1984 Miners’ Strike could not have been more poorly timed . At the end of the dispute , reform was the agenda of the Conservative government . But the miners still hoped that the 1983 report that concluded there were at least 11 million tons of coal reserves accessible to the colliery , would keep them open . The report further suggested that development of the new “Gellideg” seams at a depth of , would guarantee that the colliery could operate in profit for at least another 20 years . The NCB became the privatised British Coal in 1987 , but this was on the back of £2 million investment in the colliery in new machinery . An industrial dispute over required new work practices , resulted in a single pit strike that cost the company £150,000 . Production resumed , but faltered again in November with a week-long strike which lost 10,000 tonnes of production . Now British Coal were warned that output was at least 5,000 tonnes below target , and that further disputes would financially jeopardise the future of the colliery . By 1989 , Deep Navigation stood alone in the Taff Bargoed valley , making a profit and with coal production rising . But closure occurred that year of both the Taff Merthyr Colliery and the Trelewis Drift Mine , amongst a host of closures in the South Wales Coalfield . The colliery probably survived , as despite the 1984 Miners Strike , average output that decade had reached 375,000 tons per year . Closure . In 1990 , Deep Navigation was not added to British Coals list of mines for closure , with a reported profit of £1 million to August 1990 . The colliery received a single new Dosco roadheader in March that year . However , a geological report issued in the autumn concluded that , due to structural problems in the surrounding substrata , coal reserves would only last until 1994 . After a period of consultation with the greatly weakened National Union of Mineworkers , in January 1991 , British Coal announced the closure of Deep Navigation from Good Friday , 29 March 1991 . The Dosco machine was one of the few items retrieved from pit bottom to the surface . On Sunday 23 March , each miner was allowed to take two guests for a tour of the pit bottom circuit , where they were all presented with a commemorative medal . Deep Navigation NUM lodge provided each working and recently retired miner with a presentation Davy lamp , with over 800 lamps distributed . On the last working day , the Salvation Army band under the direction of Bandmaster Thomas Fredrick Willetts marched with the last shift to the town hall , accompanied by the MP for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney , Ted Rowlands , and the MP for Pontypridd , Dr Kim Howells , formally NUM South Wales research officer . Deep Navigation closed with 766 men on the books . The site was cleared from 1993 onwards , but the associated coal washery stayed open for another nine months , so that a stockpile of 370,000 tonnes could be prepared for market . In 1995 it took a week , working 12 hours a day , to fill the three shafts with rubble from the demolished pit head buildings . Transport . Located adjacent to Quakers Yard railway station , the colliery had access to Cardiff Docks via both the Great Westerns Taff Vale Railway , and the Midland Railways Rhymney Railway . The Rhymney Railway also gave access north to Brecon via the Brecon and Merthyr Railway , and onwards to the Midlands via the Mid-Wales Railway . Harris had a series of private owner wagons built by the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company , which considerably reduced transport costs . In later years , British Railways Class 37 locomotives rostered from Cardiff Canton and Barry depots , were placed in charge of coal hoppers on a Merry-go-round train , to transport coal to Aberthaw power station . Disasters . Due to its depth , Deep Navigation suffered various fatalities from its start of construction , with seven men dying in the six years from 1873 to 1879 . But these were just 7 out of over 110 miners , who died in accidents underground at Deep Navigation between 1873 and the start of World War I in 1914 . On 12 December 1884 , five men descended the No.2 South shaft in a bowk to replace some . Just after the winding engine commenced , the wide braided steel flat rope broke , sending four to their deaths at the bottom of the shaft below . Thomas John Dobbs , who had been guiding the bowk down a guide rope , managed to slowly lowered himself to within hailing distance of pit bottom , and was rescued with nothing more than cuts and bruises . Following an accident investigation by HM Inspectorate of Mines , it was found that the rope had corroded , where it had been in contact with the headframe sheave wheel . But as the rope was covered with a protective coating of tar , the corrosion had gone undetected . The sheave wheels on both the No.1 and No.2 shafts at Deep Navigation were unusual , in that they were constructed of different parts that had been riveted together , not a singular wheel that had been cast . The sheaves were not replaced at Deep Navigation until 1961 ( No.2 South ) , and 1963 ( No.1 North ) . On 11 November 1902 , five men lost their lives and two others were injured in No.2 South pit . A water extraction pipe fell away from the shaft wall , crashing onto an ascending double-decker mine cage . Carrying 32 men at the time of the accident , the dead and injured were travelling in the upper deck of the cage . Today . After all three collieries closed , the combined site was extensively redeveloped , with the former slag heaps removed . As a result , the brick tunnel in which the Taff Bargoed river had been redirected in 1873 was removed , and a landscaped parkland created either side of two new lakes . Opened in time for the Millennium , the park was named Parc Taff Bargoed , now home to many local rugby and football teams . External links . - Deep Navigation @ BBC Wales - Deep Navigation @ Welsh Coalmines - Deep Navigation @ Miners Advice - Pictures of Deep Navigation - History and pictures of Deep Navigation