The Senghenydd colliery disaster killed 439 miners and a rescuer. It is the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom. Universal Colliery, on the South Wales Coalfield, extracted steam coal. In an earlier disaster in May 1901, three underground explosions at the colliery killed 81 miners.
About Senghenydd colliery disaster in brief
The Senghenydd colliery disaster killed 439 miners and a rescuer. It is the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom. Universal Colliery, on the South Wales Coalfield, extracted steam coal. Some of the region’s coal seams contained high quantities of firedamp, a highly explosive gas consisting of methane and hydrogen. In an earlier disaster in May 1901, three underground explosions at the colliery killed 81 miners. In 1981 a memorial to the men who died in the disaster was unveiled by the National Coal Board, followed by a second in 2006, to honour the dead of both the 1901 and 1913 explosions. In October 2013, a Welsh national memorial to those killed in all Wales’s mining disasters was unveiled at the former pithead, depicting a rescue worker coming to the aid of one of the survivors of the explosion. The Welsh coal industry employed 1,500 workers in 1800; as the industry expanded, the workforce rose to 30,000 by 1864. By 1913 the Welsh collieries were extracting 56. 8 million long tons of coal a year, up from 8. 5 million long tons in 1854. In 1913 Britain was responsible for 25% of world coal production and 55% of all world coal exports. As output reached its peak in 1913, there was a correspondingly high number of accidents around this time. The first coal shaft was extracted in 1896; the first shafts were both 1,950 feet deep, and sinking of the first mines was the first sinking of a hamlet near Caerphilly in 1890.
When geological surveys for coal was carried out in 1890, it was found that around 100 people were living in the area. Between 1880 and 1900 South Wales accounted for 18% of Britain’s miners. 48 per cent of all UK mining deaths occurred in the region, but there were no large-scale accidents until the 1930s and 1940s. It took several weeks for most of the bodies to be recovered. The miners in the east side of the workings were evacuated, but the men in the western section bore the brunt of the blast, fire and afterdamp—a poisonous mixture of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen left after an explosion. If survivors from an explosion are not rescued quickly, they face the possibility of being killed by the gas. It was estimated that the cost of each miner lost was just 1 shilling 1 1⁄4d. In 1913 there was no large colliery in Wales, but in 2013 there was one in the northern Welsh region of Abernydd—Senghennydd, situated at the end of the Abernny Valley in the north-west of Aberphilly, about four miles from Cardiff. The colliery was owned and developed by William Lewis—which was owned and developed by William Lewis in 1891 and began in 1891. In 1896, the first coal was extracted in 1896, and two shafts were both 950 feet down, both 1 950 feet, and both were sinking and sinking.
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