TERRIBLE CALAMITY AT SHEFFIELD.

Press, Volume IV, Issue 487, 21 May 1864, Page 3

TERRIBLE CALAMITY AT SHEFFIELD.

One of those calamities which stop for a time the pulsation of the whole country, and fill the public mind with astonishment and awe, has just occurred in the neighbourhood of Sheffield. The horror is intensified by the fact that tho accident took place suddenly in the dead of the night, when the people, after

a hard day's toil, had laid themselves down to tranquil slumber; hundreds who had gone to rest in the full confidence that they would rise with the light of returning day, awoko no more, their goods, their dwellings, and everything pertaining to them —nay, their very bodies —being swept away by a mighty flood. For seven miles above the busy and populous town of Sheffield, where dwell the sons of Tubal Cain, where the clank of the hammar 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, a mighty torrent has swept, and in one night has changed the whole face of the valley into a scene of desolation and wonder such as makes the heart sad to look upon it. Peaceful villages and solitary farm-houses upon the banks of the Don have vanished from the faco of the earth, and nothing remains to mark the spot where they once stood but a long, low, brown mass of alluvial deposit, with here and there a scathed and branchless tree sticking up through the waste, or a solitary gable wall where once stood a noble house. The scene, indeed for miles is one of utter annihilation. People who liveuUipon the high hills overlooking tho valley of the Don, between Bradficld and Sheffield, when they looked forth from their chamber windows in the early morning, could not believe their eyes. A disappearance 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 and tho clacking mills that had dotted the river banks ? they had absolutely vanished, aud had left ,; not a wrack behind." There was not even the appearance of ruins, which generally attends the destruction of houses ; here and there large sheets of water ; then, again, masses of brown mud, such as tho tide leaves uncovered at low water in large estuaries ; in the centre a rushing surging torrent still making its way in huge volumes to the adjacent town of Sheffield. All this destruction of life and property had taken place, moreover, without any great alarm, without any harrowing expectation in the minds of the thousands of sleepers in Sheffield of what sights of horror the morrow would bring forth. Palo watchers in tho night had heard with affright a dull heavy roar, and now and again a solitary shriek, a cry for help where no help conld come ; then all was silent save the same dull, heavy, and continuous roar, with an occasional crash caused by a falling bridge. THE DAM. At a little before midnight on Friday, March 11, the great reservoir of the Sheffield Water Company suddenly burst its embankment and swept with the fury of another Deluge down the narrow gorge formed by the Loxley and Stannington Hills into Sheffield itself. To speak of this embankment as an ordinary reservoir would convey but a slight idea of the mass of waters which was pent up between the hills of Stannington and Loxley. It was in fact, a small lake formed by building a dam or embankment across a narrow valley, which collected the water shed of the lulls arouud. The area of water thus enclosed was nearly a mile and a quarter in length, and about a quarter of a mile broad, with a depth varying from 90 to 70 feet in its centre, and probably averaging about 40 feet throughout, and was capable of holding 114,000,000 cubic feet of water. It was built for the purpose of supplying the millowner with water-power; it received the drainage of 20,000 acres of the higher land beyond it; and the embankment which stretched across the valley, to hold the water in its place, presented a solid wall of earrhwork and masonry. THE B_EA_IUG OF THE DA3T. So firm did every one consider the masonry that held the water that no one dreamed of its giving way, until, at about nine o'clock on the above evening, after the engineers in charge had left, a farm laborer, crossing the embankment as a short cut across the valley, noticed a crack in it. He at once gave an alarm and ran down the valley to recall the engineers, Mr. Gunson and another gentleman, and he succeeded in overtaking them. They returned, but thought the crack of little importance j in a short time, however, other signs presented themselves, and they attempted to blow up a weir that crossed the dam at one end, in order to allow tho water to escape. While the men were engaged in laying the charge, Mr. Gunson and his companion wont to the fissure, and crossed it. Mr. Gunson had scarcely got clear when the fissure widened to a tremendous crevasse, aud a portion of the embankment gave way at once. The gap made measures at the top from 80 to 100 yards, and at the bottom abont 20 yards. Through this opening the overwhelming body of water dashed with terrible impetuosity. THE COC-SE OF THE FLOOD. The enormous volume of water burst down the hill side, roaring like the heaviest thunder, and the unhappy cottiers in the valley were drowned instantaneously in their houses, from which they had not the slightest chance of escape. The full fury of the flood spent itself on the district lying between tho junction of tho Loxley and the Riveliu and the Neepsend bridge. Tlie scene of devastation there is awful. Solid and substantial buildings, workshops, rows of houses, bridges, everything that opposed the course of the flood, yielded before its overwhelming might. News of the danger had been carried by messengers down the valley for a mile or two, and the warned villagers had time to escape. But before the messengers could reach the heait ot the valley the mighty flood was close upon their heels, and they had to run for their own lives. Rushing on towards Sheffield, the flood literally swept from off the face of the earth the villages of Low Bradfield, Damflask, Little Matlock, and Malm bridge. Whole families .were swept away with their dwellings, and not a trace remained of the thriving and industrious artizans who sought their beds on that most fatal night, unconscious of the dreadful fate fate that has so suddenly befallen them. Between Hillsborough-bridge and Malm-bridge there stood several long rows of cottage houses, inhabited by the workmen of tho mills and forges on the adjacent streams, with their families. With a few exceptions, the flood has wholly demolished all these rows of dwellings. In many instances even their foundations are obliterated. Standing at the junction of the

Loxley and the Rivelin are only a few scattered houses, the Avails and windows burst in by the flood, standing to mark the site of the once populous village. The enormous volume of water debouching from ..the

gorge at the foot of Loxley valley seems to have divided itself into two streams, which sweptwith resistless force over tho hamlets of Mahn-bridge and Hillsborough, Tho bridges that formerly crossed the stream, have been sdept away to their foundation stones, and the districts which the streams divide were seperated by a rushing torrent of water.