DOWN TO DEATH.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 44, 21 February 1891, Page 3 (Supplement)

DOWN TO DEATH.

A Dozen Men Hurled Four Hundred Feet Down a Shaft.

A terrible accident occurred in the north shaft of bhe Utica mine, near Angel's Camp thirteen miles from San Andreas. Just about noon the ekip, carrying two tons of rock and a dozen miners, on their way to the surface to dinner, was being hoisbed up bhe shafb. When within 150 feeb of bhe top of the shaft bhe cable parted at the reel, letting the men on the skip and 150 feet of the cable fall into the sump at the bottom of the shaft, a distance of 450 feet. The bodies presented a sickening sight, being fearfully mutilated, one being found without any head and another with half the body and the lower limbs. The sump contained about fourteen feeb of water. The pump was pub on and four bodies have so far been recovered. W. Case, son of Dr. Case, Copperopolis, ordered one man off before starting up and took his place on bhe skip. Superinbendenb Lane passed up early in themorning to the mine from San Francisco. Ho was unable to give any theory of the cause of the break of the rope. He says it was a new ebeel-wire rope, warranbed to hoisb forty tons. Tho full load ab the time of the accident could nob have been over five tons.

It is but a little over a year ago that a cave occurred in the same mine, burying sixteen men, and this slow work of recovering their bodies had just been accomplished when this second disaster took placo,