Page:VCH Cornwall 1.djvu/654

 A HISTORY OF CORNWALL of the steam-engine. It is not clear when or at what place the latter first appeared in Cornwall. Pryce dates its introduction at about the year iJoS. 1 Carne declares that the first was at work at Wheal Vor from 1710 to 1 7 14- 2 Redding, on the other hand, says that the earliest was erected in 1725 at Wheal Rose. 3 It was still believed that water could be raised only 32 feet, and at first the new invention took the form of a series of steam suction pumps which, in mines of any depth, were so multiplied that the first outlay and subsequent cost were enormous. The scale on which Cornish mines were oper- ated, and the increasing amount of work thrown upon the engine, soon rendered it imperative that some forcing arrangement be adopted. Morland had patented the plunger in 1675,* but its development was slow, and the first note we have of its adoption in any mine is in 1796, in the United Mines, Gwennap. 5 Meanwhile, Savery's engine of 1696 had been superseded by Newcomen's in 1705) yet so con- servative were the tinners that in 1742 only one steam-engine was to be found in the whole county. 6 Then came a rapid advance, and in the next 36 years more than sixty were erected, and more than half had been rebuilt and en- larged. 7 Newcomen's engine, effective as it was in comparison with previous efforts, was com- pletely displaced in the latter years of the eigh- teenth century by that of Boulton and Watt. Their first engine in Cornwall was erected in I777 8 at Chacewater. In five years' time twenty-one had been set up, and only one of Newcomen's remained, that, too, disappearing in 1790.* Further improvements at the hands of Trevithick, Hornblower, and Woolf brought the Cornish mine-engine to a high state of efficiency in the early decades of the nineteenth century, 9 while the practice of draining the sur- face of the mines, and the greater attention given to the tightness of the adits and pit work, lessened materially the work required of the engines. 10 The result of these improvements was a rapid increase in the depths at which tin could be 1 Pryce, Mineralogia Cornubiensis, 153. Roy. Geol. Sac. Cormv. iii, 50. 3 Yesterday and To-Day, i, 128. 4 A similar kind of pump was known to the ancients, but had lacked the most important part of Morland's invention, the stuffing-box. s ' Cornish Mine Drainage,' by Mitchell and Letchies, Rep. Roy. Cornai. Polytechnic Soc. 1874, 1 3S- 6 Worth, Historical Notes Concerning the Progress of Mining Skill, 22. 7 Pryce, Mineralogia Coranbiensis, xiv. 8 Ibid. 313. 9 ' Improvements in Mining, by Jos. Carne, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Corma. iii, 52, 53, 56. Worth, His- torical Notes Concerning the Progress of Mining Skill, 23. 10 ' Improvements in Mining,' by Jos. Carne, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cormv. iii, 66. mined. From 1720 to 1778, 90 fathoms repre- sented the maximum depth as attained by the aid of the Newcomen engine ; but the advent of Watt's improved machines is marked by a sudden increase of this maximum to about 200 fathoms in the years approximately from 1778 to 1812. During the following quarter-century 200 was reached, 11 and the progress during the remainder of the century was correspondingly rapid. The Dolcoath Mine, in 1900, had reached a depth of 470 fathoms below adit, 12 and several other Cornish works were little less extensive. 13 Nearly contemporaneous with the great ad- vances in ore-dressing and mine-drainage appears an almost equally important improvement in the apparatus for mining itself. A description of an ordinary tin miner's tools is given in Philosophical Transactions in 1671, showing that, with the exception of tamping-iron and borer, they were practically the same as to-day. A beele, or Cornish tubber, was used, with double points, 8 or 10 pounds in weight, and well steeled. With care it might last six months, but had to be new-pointed every fortnight. A sledge weighed from 10 to 2O pounds, and should last 7 years. Gads, or wedges, were of 2 pounds weight with steel points. They lasted for about a week, but required sharpening every two or three days. 14 These and the ubiquitous shovel and barrow constituted the tinner's kit. The drilling and splitting of the lode were rendered obsolete by the introduction of blasting. It seems to have been introduced in Hungary or Germany in about the year 1620, but England did not take it up until 1670, when we find it introduced into the copper mines at Ecton, Staffordshire, by German miners brought in by Prince Rupert. 16 From there it spread into Somerset in i684, 15 and soon afterwards entered Cornwall, where it seems to have been employed at St. Agnes in the beginning of the eighteenth century. 18 After that its universal adoption was simply a matter of time. For more than a century blasting was carried on in Cornwall in a dangerous way. 17 After the 11 Worth, Historical Notes concerning the Progress of Mining Skill, 24. 13 Records of the London and West Country Chamber of Mines, vol. i. pt. i, 16. 13 Ibid. 18. 14 ' Mineral Observations on the Mines of Cornwall and Devon,' Philosoph. Trans, vi, 2104. 15 ' State of the Tin Mines at Different Periods,' by J. Hawkins, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornvi. iv, 84. ' History of Mining in Cornwall and Devon,' by John Taylor, Tilloch's Philosoph. Magazine, v, 357. Gallo- way, dnnals of Coal Mining and the Coal Trade, 226, 227. 16 Worth, Historical Notes concerning the Progress of Mining Skill, 17;' State of the Tin Mines at Different Periods,' by J. Hawkins, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Corntv. iv, 86. 17 Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornto. , 78, et seq. ; Worth, Historical Notes concerning the Progress of Mining Skill, 1 8. 550
 * ' Improvements in Mining,' by Jos. Carne, Tram.