THE BULLI EXPLOSION.

Evening Star, Issue 7179, 5 April 1887, Page 2

THE BULLI EXPLOSION.

[Abridged from the 'Arous.*] horrors op the exploration. The township after three days'tension and foment has, at the time of writing, sunk into comparative stillness if not repose. Many men and women, wom out by three days' watching, working, and anguish, have at last gained time to sleep; but lights shining here aid there through cottage windows show that to the inmates the end—viz., the recovery and burial of their dead—has not yet come, and that the weary vigil is still being kept. Starting once more for the mine, I see in front high up on the mountain path flitting lights, like will o' the wisps. Presently these glow-worms are seen to be lanterns, and swarthy figures come indistinctly out of the gloom. This is the last relief party making their way wearily homeward, as the last body, they tell me, has been found and coffined. These men relate freely the carnage they have seen and the peril and leprous nature of their task; how the explosion shattered the supports of the mine and blocked the workings so that the searcheisand bearers could in places hardly clamber over the piles of wreckage with the bodies of their late comrades; and how, as time went on, it became almost insupportable to remove the corpses from among the carcasses of truck-horses that perished with their drivers. I learn that life was taken so suddenly from those toiling men at the fatal shaft that one was found with arms upraised, in the act of striking at the face of the coal with his 'pipk, that fell from the hands'relaxed in death. Another—but this was further from the seat of the explosion—had cowered with his hands before his face, as if to ward off a blow; while his mate had. thrust his hat before bis mouth, as if to keep out from his throat the poisonous after-damp that choked his lungs. A fourth, in that instant which succeeded the fearful shook, had died while dropping upon his knees and lifting his hands in an attitude of prayer. But most of the bodies were thrown about pell-mell, just as fragments of stone fly when a chatge of dynamite is fired. The distance some men, and even horses, were driven along the levels, would,' the men declared, have been incredible if they had not had most painful proof of it, and in' the less open spaces men were literally smashed by being heaved with fearful force against the sides pf tha pit and the trucks.

The narrative of this relief party is full of the truth, the dramatio force, which comes from the lips of eye-witnesses, and to it all closely listen. A shuddering woman who had crept gently to the spot, possessed, \a her newly-made widowhood, a spirit of unrest. I knew a little of her. She had earlier, in reply to a word of sympathy, told me that all along she had augured ill of the strike. "' Harry, I said, when my man brought his tocls out of the mine, ' no good will come of it. Whenever the mine has gone on strike we have always lost a man, and it will be so again.' 'I can't help it, mother,' he said, 'the Union has told us to go out, and out we must go.'" " And," continued the poor woman, "thestrike went on for nearly eight months, until everything was used up, and they began only a fortnight ago to bring us to this. I did not even see my husband, I wanted to, but they wouldn't let me. I put a pillow under his head, poor fellow, while he was in the deadhouse, and made him comfortable. I'm a bit better since they got him, but it's poor comfort to seo bis grave, to look at him, and think how good he was to me." I merely mention this to shew the feeling in the district, as the material evidence is all the other way. It is said that while the mine was at a standstill during the strike the fire-damp accumulated and ultimately caused the explosion. The error of this supposition is explained by the fact that all through the long interruption the mine was ventilated as usual—that is to say, the furnaces were kept going. Within a week of the disaster the Government inspector, Mr R, Rowan, reported that there was 600 cubic feet of air per man, or six times as much fresh air in the Bulli' mine as was Quired by the Alining Apt, wbiph is much more stringent than the English Minpa Regulation Act. On the 7th of the present Mr M'l£en?ie, examiner of mines, reported most favorably of the ventilation and general condition of the mine,

CAUSE OP THB EXPLOSION. There we plenty of theories of causes, and it is very doubtful whether the most searching investigation will ever get beyond indicating which out of several is the most likely supposition to be the right one, for all the lips that could have testified are sealed by death. Not one man who was w-lthfy a mile of the spot where the originate;! lived to tell whether the concussion of a shot, the exposure of a naked light, grogs carelessness, or the ordinary conditions under wj}lph. the. mine was worked caused th.e stupendous tragedy. A great deal is heard among the. wen about the use of naked lights to assist the parsimony of the Oompany, It appears that 3d more per ton was paid for getting out' coal by the light of the Davys than by ordinary lights, and henoe the men aver that risk was ran in order to cheapen the cost of production and add to the profits of the Oompany. On telling Mr Wallace, the legal representative of the Company, of these assertions, he pointed out that the Oompany hadlnever had any reason to expect an explosion of gas, seeing that none had eirer faken place in the, Co]ony before, and therefore ttie stringent precautions against the use of naked lights, which are enforced in England, were not considered necessary. He also explained that it was not the use of one light or the other that regulated the schedule of payment, but merely the fact that the safety lamps were used in the most advanced faces, where the men have to work in confined spaces and cramped positions as compared with the more developed p rtions of the workings of the mine. It wqls kno\vn that gas in small quantities u?ei t<> escape from the face in one part of the mine. In this, which was called "the gassy district," only safety lamps were: used. But these escapes of gas amounted to more than that. If a light were applied to the fissures a small jet of flame would appear, The question will arise at the beginning as to whether it was ooal gas, or, in other words, fi .e-darcp, that exploded, or coal dust. Experiments! have been conducted in France and England with results that Mr Abigail, the Minister of Mines, is assured would acoount for the destruction of life. The problem briefly is, will finely-powdered coal, when impregnated with a oertain quantity of oxygen and brought into contact with concussion, and a flame, explode; and the authorities quoted by Mr Abigail say that it will. If it will, then a reasonable clue to the terrible mystery is obtained! for in none of the mines in New South Wales is such a danger guarded against. All the elements were present in the Bulli mine to provide for such an explosion. Gunpowder was used, to wit; there was plenty of powdered coal constantly rising in a cloud of dust from the wheels of the trupks and the hoofs 'of the herses drawing them: and, moreover, I have the authority of Mr Wallace for saying that a gunpowder shot was fifed close upon the disaster. The place where the charge was put in is there; there the coal that it brought down; and, more than all, a dead miner was found sitting in a crosscut to which he evidently had retired for shelter from the shot. Take note that the man was j sitting with his hands to his chin in an attitude of rest, as though be had been killed, in the instant of the firing of the charge. All these things joint to an explanation! as to why the mine exploded, and the explanation gathers force from the significant fact that the explosion itself gained power the further it travelled along the workings of the mine. - All these workings were filled with ooal dust; bat if they were all filled with coal gas, how did it occur that the naked lights that were freely distributed under ground did not ignite it ? > In the recent Lithgow qpciflent, which was due to a portion of the mine taking fire, the force of the explosion grew weaker the further it travelled from the centre, wh ; oh points to the fact that the origin of the explosion was different,to that which occurred in the Bulli mine. In putting these statements forward it must be borne in mind that I really advance them as the suggestions' and inferences of experts, BEAVK HEN. . I never so much wished for the gift of expression as now, when I oome to speak of the part played by the rescue parties, whoße heroism only needs to be known to be admired as it deserves. Happily there were those who saw these men risking their lives, and comld ■ note the soldier-like alacrity and gallantry with which they pursued their most unwelcome task in semi-darkness, in a pestilential atmosphere. Who can measure the courage, the high spirit of manhood, which animated these men t They came not in ssores, but in hundreds, from North Bulli, from Mount, Kembla, and from 'Mount Kara, to eagerly take part in an enterprise in which life r was'staked >at every moment, against the hazard of the" falling workings and poisonous gas. As, sqon as one gang was overpowered with tf?P foul air and the toilsome scrambling over the masses of rock which obstructed the drives, several more were not only willing, but pressing forward to go upon the same sickening errand; and what ennobles the intrepidity and manful resoluteness of these m -n is'the faot that they ha ve been—yet are—at war with the mapagement of the mine, which they in their blind ignorance blame for the catastrophe. ' It was on the appeal of this | management—though an appeal was not needed —that this gallant army of coalworkers flocked to the standard of rescue, though it were only a lescue that, the dead should have; Christian burial. Among that army were' men who lost their places by the strike, and whose places were usurped by some of those jion : uniqn men, who ,now lis. still and cold within the mine, ■ Yet from- the north, south, east, and west of Bulli the old hands rushed, with bitterness in their hearts for old grievances, tp r the assistance in their dire extremity of .'the manager?, and, fojr €he time being,proclaiming a truce to a}! factious feeling, worked'as only hardy miners can work in underground workings., These intrepid bands went into the mine when tiie deathly black-damp was so thick and noisome after the explosion that men fell sick and fainted by the way, and had to be carried into the outer air to save their lives, only when they recovered to go back again until the last corpse—the eighty-fifth—-was borne out of that great catacomb, with its miles of' deviously ramified passages, ' If ever menhad a self-approving eonsci«we for having done their duty, it is the miners'of-the Bulli

district, whose conduct in the terrible emergency just passed through is worthy of the best annals of the British race. CHHD MINERS. In the many painful scenes of this thrilling and momentous tragedy, nothing has been more acutely sorrowful than the death of some fifteen boys, drivers.of the truck loads of coal from the miners' workings to the mouth. Many of these boys, whom poverty's pinch had sent Into the mine to labor hard at an age when oWiers more happily placed were thinking only of topii and marbles, were bred and born in Bulb, and the carrying out of their corpses excited a P«jUliar commisseration even among those who had lost a relative of their own. "Poor little Tom, he and his brother have never been away from tta mount, where they used to play like rabbits, ft woman cried, with a glowing, burst of emotion, as a small corpse was carried byj albeit aba was waiting mournfully for the bearers to find her husband in the same big tomb. The brother, a little older, was found soon after, and side by side they lay in the blacksmith a shop until they were carried to the churchyard. In life they were together, and in death they were not parted. It is hard for people who live in large cities to realise how fearfully this small community has been decimated by a single calamity. The people in Bulli all live by the labor of their hand* ana. the Bulli mine is the source for &* empfoyi ment of all handß. Hence \\ was not unusual for a father, and one, two, or even three sons, or brothers, to be working in the mine, and, as ia well known, all who went into the coal workings on that dreadful morning perished without exception. The alleged survivors cannot to said to havo survived the explosion, because they were not its radios. All who were perished suddenly without a shadow of opportunity to escape. "All hope abandon ye who enter here," would have been a fitting lnscrin. tion over the dread portals of the pit s mouth. On Wednesday morning last one man who went in with the shift did come out alive, but that was due to a luoky mischance which saved his life. He cut his head with his pickaxe, and a% his mates could not staunch the blood, he was, taken out of the workings and went hojuo, CORRECT LIST OF THB| VJOTIM£, The following is a corrected list of the bodies brought out and identified: Louis Gorressen John M 'Bride

George Smith John Adamjon Henry Thomas Wm. Lucas Jno. M'Carthy Wm. Woodland Hy. Graham Jno. Michael, Doyle, Hy, Bans, Olsen John Anderson Chas. Jowetti Wm. Williams Wm. Snodgrass. Cr.Nesl Samuel Cwr John O'Neill John M'Lelland John Lonsdale Wm. Thompson James Hay Robt. Browning Wm. Schofer Greener Brodie Wm. Brodie John Smith Robt. Newton Jeremiah Westwood Joseph Cromptoa Luke Jackson Thomas Melville Thos. Davis Joseph Davia Jno, Bees Lewis Williams Wm. Walker Wm. Wade ' Geo. Stephens Ernest Watts Wm. Ottawa Bouren Bobt. Millward Felix John Bouren James Bouren Thos. Gibbons John Thos. Wynn George Ooombes or Harry Obombee or Walker Walker Edwin Bean Geo. Robinson Geo. Ralph John Mackie Richd. Wave Cecil or Phelim Cavefl, John Sullivan Jas. Hicks Abel Newton Hy. Deans Jno. Rigby Wm. Hicki«an Jno. Bentley Jno. Crane. Jas. Traise Thos. Wishart Thos. Harris, sen. Frank Harris Isaiah Poppitt H. Sprowl John Barcroft or Ban- Thomas Jones croft Thomas Mackie. John Galloway Jno. Rya^ Tho.se who. haye not been, identified, includingtwo missing, are:— ' " John Robinson James Metcalf Jas. Ourvia Jas. King Richard Wa.de Wm. Htrch Thos, Wilson H. Ehmann Wm. Vlegel' Wm, Bouren Jno. Smith Wm, Smith. There were two men named in the colliery list of eighty-five who were found to have been out of the mine. These were Victor Hohn and Fred. Smith,

SbXIEfl MEETINGS—AN EXiMPIiE WOKTH There was an example set at a miners* meet*, ing at Woliongong on Tuesday night wWolj oqght to give a stimulus to rioher communities in helping the relief fund. Woliongong has suffered by the strike, and the miners, who comprise eight tenths of its population, have had nothing but doles of strike-pay to sustain them for many weary months, until within the last week or two. The meeting was called by the Mayor, and the Minister of Mines was present, and made an appeal The hall was full, and the money dropped bountifully from horny palms which could not hear! unmoved the cry for aid from the distressed widows and orphans. It seemed a point of honor with every man to give a pound if he could possibly scrape it together, but seme held hack, apparently not able to da go, at that moment, The right chord was strupk at this juncture by a miner stepping ap to the table and depositing four shillings, with the remark "That's all I have got now, but you'll have the other sixteen shillings on Monday." The cheer which rose from the meeting was hearty, and my informant adds " that time payment brought many others." Money is flowing in freely both at Melbourne and Sydney, At Sydney LIBQ was collected from visitors to the Orient Company's new steamer Ormuz. In several of the Melbourne churches the whole of a Sunday's collection is to be given in aid of the fund At a crowded meeting in the Sydney Town Hall, on the 28th ult, the speakers, including Governor Cartington, the Chief Justice, Admiral Tryon, Mr Julian Salomons, Q.C., the Archdeacon of Cumberland, the Bev. Dr Jefferis, Rabbi Davis, and Mr Dibbs, over L 3.000 was collected in the room. Sir Daniel Cooper sent his cheque for LBSO, being the balanoe of his contribution to the patriotic fund. The Melbourne Stock Exchange voted LIOO, and the Melbourne bookmakers, headed by Joseph Thompson, subscribed L 240. The P. and O. and Orient companies will make a small charge during April for visits by the public to their steamers, the proceeds to go to the relief fund.