When the Steam Line Broke.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3, 17 July 1912, Page 47

When the Steam Line Broke.

By

LUCIUS L. WITTICH.

▼ ~OAVE you ever blistered your hand over a boiling tea-kettle * If so, 1 / you 'know how painful the ex- / perience is. Picture yourself lowered into a pit in the bottom of wh’reh iten thousand open tea-kettles are hissing; picture yourself so badly blistered that your injuries confine you to your bed for eighteen long months; picture yourself so horribly lacerated that you are disflgured; for life, that you will never regain the use of your hands, that you are forced to walk on crutches for years, and you will have a faint conception o£ the appalling'catastrophe that 'befell Mr iR. D. Dennison, a Joplin mine-operator, an the fall of 1902. An enemy, who hesitated to face Mr. Dennison in open conflict, conceived and put into execution the fiendish plot, from which the victim with injuries that were worse than death. For obvious reasons the name of Mr. Dennison’s murderous fel-low-worker is not given. The story of that terrible quarter-hour in the seething pit is best told by Mr. Dennison, who, after years of intense suffering, has sutfieently recovered to actively engage in tnisiness. His address is 539, Ridge Building, Kansas City, Missouri, and he is now (Western representative for the C. \V. [Raymond Company, manufacturers '■ of Clay-working machinery, of Dayton, Ohio. ’Here is the story as Mr. Dennison told it to me: —

With K. C. Ferguson and Jack Jones [(fictitious name) I was mining for zinc and lead on a lease of the Allen Dixon Farm, several miles north-west of Joplin, Missouri. From the proceeds of the ores sold we deducted ten or fifteen per cent., .which sum was paid to Mr. Dixon as royalty on his land. The mine-shaft was sunk to a depth of a hundred and eightyof a hundred and forty feet, at which two feet, but we were mining at a depth level a big steam-pump had been installed (The exhaust-pipe, instead of being run to the surface, permitting the steam to escape in the open air, was’ extended into the “sump”—that part of the shaft beneath the drifts in which we worked. .The exhaust-pipe was submerged in the stagnant water at the bottom of the shaft, and while this arrangement .worked well while the pump was in steady operation it left no way of telling whether or not the pump was running properly.

Coal was used for fuel beneath the boiler that furnished steam both for the pump and for the hoister. Ferguson worked the night shift in the engine room,’while Jones had charge throughout the day. The work of Jones was decidedly unsatisfactory. We were trying to drain the lower levels, and while Ferguson would beat the water ten feet at night. Jones would permit it to rise to its old level throughout the day. On several occasions I mentioned the matter to Jones, but the latter would always find some plausible excuse. All the time, however, an ill-feeling was springing up between us. 1 The company, of course, was up against a losing proposition so long as these methods were followed, ami Jones was urged repeatedly to accomplish better work: but each day seemed to see him farther from results, and he became very irritable whenever I spoke of his failure to accomplish his share of the work. It was a petty misunderstanding, I must admit, but one which rankled in the mind of our mining partner until it developed, in his eyes, into a grievance or Titanic magnitude. He brooded over what lie thought to be a conspiracy to pusr him from his holdings, and. although the differences between us were really of no importance, this ease, like others of a similar character, developed a hatred on his part that knew no pounds. Pri October Bth, 1992, I went to the n, ’iPV «nd found the machinery workJng \»adlv. I called Jones’ attention to water was steadily it was impossible whether or not the pump r un, >inx; at any rate, it was not ■working as it should. Had the exhaustW on the surface it would have

been apparent in an instant that; the pump was not in operation, although the full head of steam was being forced through the steam-line. But, buried as it was in the water of the sump, the ex-haust-pipe gave no clue to existing conditions. “Jones,” I said, “something is wrong with .that pump: if you will let me down I will try to determine what the trouble is.” He grow led his acquiescence, stepped to the hoister, lowered the big iron tub to <the level of the shaft’s mouth, and permitted me to step in.

,“I will take this hammer along to signal with,” I told him. “If I tap once on the column-pipe hoist immediately. Dower me very slowly, and when I tap twice stop the tub. Now, don’t forget—one tap, hoist.” The shaft was four by six feet, cribbed with timbers for a portion of the way down, and the old iron pipe of the pump fitted closely in one corner, extending down to the seat, a hundred and forty feet lieneath. in which the pump was stationed. Five condemned wire cables, rough as buzz saws. were strung in another corner of the shaft tb he'p hold the timbers jn place. 1 lit a miner's lamp, hooked it in my hat, procured a heavy hammer, and got into the tub. Ae- 1 shouted up to Jones in tire

high above my head I again cautioned him to pay careful attention to my signals. Almost before the words were but of my mouth the tub began descending as though the cable had broken. Had the shaft lieen in the best of condition that headlong descent would have been enough to turn a man against mining for the rest of his days. I shouted in anger, but to no avail. I reached out to strike a signal on the pump-line, but the tub was whirling dizzily, and the hammer came in contact only with the saggy timbers of the cribbing, not making enough noise to be heard five feet away. From what followed, moreover, I judged that a signal would have been of little use, even had I been able to give one. It was discovered afterwards that the three-inch steam-line leading to the pump—a fourteen-ineh cylinder affair, having two hundred and forty exhausts to the minute —had snapped in two at a point a hundred and twenty feet beneath the surface of the ground, and the clouds of suffocating steam, instead of reaching the pump in condensed form, were pouring into the narrow shaft, fill-

ing it with intense heat and suffocating fumes. Although it takes a long time to narrate the horror of that descent, it was. in reality, only a few seconds before I felt myself sinking into a cloudland of intolerable heat. 1 was dizzy from the rapid turning of the tub. 1 reached out again and tried to signal, and in the effort lost the hammer. An instant later my miner’s lamp was extinguished by the conflicting currents of air. and I felt myself falling through total darkness to what seemed an inevitable death. My face first felt the effects of the unbeatable heat: almost before I had awakened to a realization of what was taking place 1 felt the flesh blistering, and a moment later the same sensation was telegraphed

to the tips of my fingers. I was falling as rapidly as the tub could be lowered, and although 1 did not know at that, time what had happened to the pump, I realized that further descent into that inferno of steam mint mean dmth. Without a seconds hesitation I took the one chance afforded me and jumped out into space, the tub meanwhile speeding on its downward course. The chances were a hundred to one that I should miss all handholds and plunge into the sump. I stood the chance, certainly, to crawl upward to a point of safety; I stood a chance, also, of grasping the sawtoothed cables. In the two other corners nothing remained to give me comfort; in one was the steaming-hot pipe that led to the pump, in the other there was nothing to which I could hold. As luck, or ill-luck, would have it, my hanl/s came in contact with the steam line. It was like grabbing a red-hot poker, but I held on. The pipe, three inches in diameter, burned the flesh of my hands, and the leather of my shoes was little protection for my feet. I had hold of the steam-line at a point about a hundred feet beneath the surface, and not more than twenty feet below 1 could hear the deafening thunder of the steam as it escaped from the broken easing. I could feel the hot pipe eating into the very bones of my hands and feet, and all the time the flesh was curling up on my face. It was dark —pitch-dark —in the shaft, but far above 1 could see the little square of light that marked the opening of my tomb. Inch by inch I crawled upward’ the flesh of my hands, mv feet, my arms, my legs, and my body being continually seared from contact with the pipe, while the atmosphere about me was suffocating from the escaping steam. :At a point forty feet below the surface the cribbing ended, and when I reached this I released my hold on the hot metal and held on to the cooler tintIwr. But by this time I had lost all sense of feeling, and I often wonder what strange power caused my fingers to retain Their ability to grasp even after all the flesh and muscles had been burned away, and only the bones remained. From the base of the yrilibiiig I climbed upward to a point twenty feet beneath the surface, where the cribbing, water soaked from surface seepage, became too slippery to permit of farther ascent. I shouted wildly, and Jones s head protruded over one side of the square of light eliove me. 1 shall never forget the look upon his face. “What arc you doing there he de ma tided. “For Heaven’s sake. Jones, throw me a rope 1 I’m dying!” 1 panted. For a full minute he gazed at me as one stupefied, but he made no effort to lower a rope. Instead, he quitted the shaft opening, and about a minute later the sudden twitching of the hoister cable, stretching through the gloom of (he shaft in front of me, toll me that he was hoisting the tub—and at a dreadful speed. Had the tub come in’contact with me, it must inevitably have knocked me from my position. Again I risked big odds and leaped towards the cable, throwing my arms around it. Then the tub caught me and 1 realised that 1 was safe. I caught a fleeting glance if the sunlight, that I had never expected to see again—and after that I remembered nothing until 1 awoke in a Joplin hospital two weeks later. Jones disappeared from the district immediately after the affair happened, thua frustrating any attempt to investigate or punish his conduct.