Cumnock Chronicle | Features | Knockshinnoch Disaster

Published: Thursday, 13th September, 2007 09:13

Knockshinnoch Disaster

By Bill Aitken

THERE are some days you never forget.

Your first day at school .... the day you started work .... when your first child was born.

For me there is another day etched indelibly in the memory - the day a field fell in on 129 New Cumnock miners and the world called it “The Knockshinnoch Disaster”.

For different people it started in different ways. For me it commenced with a phone call from a colleague and a terse message, “129 men trapped at Knockshinnoch Castle”.

It was late on Thursday, September 7, 1950, and a car dash to New Cumnock was followed by a hasty exchange of greetings with what looked like the entire Ayrshire press corp who, somehow or other, had managed to get there ahead of the local man.

To a dark field where just opposite the Afton Cemetery where, in pouring rain, we were told how a large section of the ground had collapsed into the No. 5 heading of the pit trapping 129 men.

And all around was confusion ... to the extent that journalists stuffed notebooks into raincoat pockets and soon found themselves part of a long line of helpers man-handling pit props, bales of hay, sheets of metal, small fir trees that appeared out of the dark as if by magic ... anything that would plug the yawning chasm down which sludge continued to chum with deadly purpose into the pit.

DAWN on Friday brought some cohesion and the first firm Coal Board news. The heading had slanted, an inrush had cut off 13 of the men and 116 had scrambled to the comparative safety of the West Mine, above the level of the tentacles of the murderous peat ... and to a providential telephone linked with the surface.

Well over 3,000 harried fellow workers, wives, relatives, volunteers from all over Ayrshire, crowded around the scene. And the first of the world’s Press began to arrive by road, rail and air. It was the first time we’d ever seen a man from Time, a reporter and photographer team from Life and a dishevelled and red-eyed representative from New York Times. When we saw our first copies of the daily papers we realised that New Cumnock had replaced the war in Korea on the world’s front pages. The whole of Fleet Street seemed to have landed on New Cumnock overnight.

It was just as well it was a mining village ... where kindly, grey-haired housewives beckoned the stranded newsmen to their homes for breakfast and waved away the suggestion of payment as an insult ... for every hotel, boarding house and B&B home was packed solid. Offices and telephones were commandeered by newsmen who had never in their lives heard of New Cumnock until that fateful night.

King George sent a message of sympathy; Clem Atlee was Prime Minister and he, too, with Lord Balfour (head of the Coal Board in Scotland) sent a telegram. There was no shortage of goodwill ...

But for those of us who were actually there, on the scene, the reaction of the outside world meant little. They didn’t really know what it was like. They could not, with the best of will, the most fervid imagination in the world, sense the great feeling of tension, the appalling prospect of loss that lined every face around us. They didn’t know that from one small miner’s cottage three menfolk were most closely involved in the outcome of the rescue operation that was being rapidly organised ... all three having gone down Knockshinnoch on the ill-fated Thursday afternoon shift. They couldn’t actually see the drawn, haggard faces of wives, brothers, sisters, mothers who swarmed to the pithead as the first bulletins began to appear on the scarred notice boards and the first rumours began to fly from mouth to worried mouth.

THE eyes of the world were centred on the little Ayrshire mining village.

The messages on the fading 'phone continued from oversman Andrew Houston - the men were in good spirits, some were resting, others were impatient to try a break-out rescue bid on their own. And there was still no word of the missing 13 miners trapped by the inrush.

But at the pithead the news was more bleak. A working in the old Bank No 6 had been selected as the rescue route. And it was inundated with black damp. Volunteers struggled to get rid of the gas and the first hole was drilled to link rescuers with the trapped men.

Spirits rose and waned with each item of news from underground. And it soon became evident that it would be no easy rescue ... no simple matter of walking to freedom.

And so Friday passed in a dull grey haze of rumour, counter rumour, hope raised, hope quashed. And still the waiting thousands stood mute and ever hopeful, as if by their very presence they could somehow help the trapped miners to break free from their dark prison.

And to those of us entrusted with the task of keeping the outside world informed, the hectic battle for telephone time was offset by the long periods of seeking hard facts from mining officials who, we readily agreed, were strung taut with the heavy weight of responsibility that rested on their shoulders. It was at times like this that I recall the great number of Salvation Army workers who dotted the pithead scene and who led prayer when it was called for or helped with the steady supply of tea and sandwiches for rescuers and others.

And one of my most vivid memories of the whole Knockshinnoch episode is of the small, tousle-haired woman who told me: “We have poured 128 urns of tea up until nine o’clock on the Friday. And after that I lost count. It gave me something to do. You see, my son’s down there.”

Nurses and doctors stood by at Ballochmyle Hospital and a fleet of ambulances lined the approach road to the pit. Local doctors were on hand, volunteer nurses stood by. But still the question mark hung over the village - would the men manage to make their way through gas-filled workings or would the noxious vapours beat the rescuers?

Friday dragged into Saturday ... and then came news of the decision to use Salvus rescue gear, the heroic journey of NCB deputy divisional labour director David Park to join the trapped men and instruct them in the use of the life-saving masks, his promise not to leave the workings until every man had passed to safety. Many of us knew Dave from his younger days in New Cumnock and his early mining career at Bank and we were not surprised at his action. He was, after all, from the mining stock of the village. They don’t talk about heroics ... only about doing what you have to do for the men who work in the pits.

A look at an old notebook, carefully preserved, shows that Dan Jess led a rescue party to the escape hole and when he shouted for his brother Dave (one of the trapped men) he heard the strains of “Bonnie Lass o’ Ballochmyle,” a favourite in the Jess household.

The first man out, 19-year-old Gibby McAughtrie, came to the surface just before 4pm on the Saturday. I was there when he told his father, 'They are OK dad - singing like linties.” His brothers, Tom and Robert, were amongst the rescuers.

My dog-eared notebook shows that by mid-evening on Saturday 53 men had been led to safety through the barrier of gas. And as others emerged at intervals they were greeted by cheers of the crowds, many of whom had been at the pithead since Friday morning.

The last man walked through the gas to safety on Sunday at 1.30am. The “prison’ they had left behind was only 45 yards long. In it they had kept their spirits up by singing and reciting poetry. Said one, “It was a bit like a Burns Supper ... with no drink.” Another admitted, “We sang some songs I wouldn’t care to mention.”

Some of the younger men went to sleep while waiting for rescue. Others had prayed.

Most of the men were taken to Ballochmyle Hospital for check-up. I remember 54-year-old Alex Thomson walking from the ambulance smoking his pipe after his 50 hours entombment. Warned by other patients that he wouldn’t be allowed to smoke in the ward, Alex paused for a few minutes at the entrance to savour a few last puffs before entering the hospital.

The world knows that 116 men escaped the nightmare of Knockshinnoch and that 13 men lost their lives. It was a cruel reminder to Ayrshire folks - though none was needed - of the real price of coal. It shocked not only a county but the whole country.

The rescue was described as one of the most successful and most meticulously planned in the annals of modern mining. Knockshinnoch Colliery closed a few years ago and many of the men are now employed at Killoch Colliery near Ochiltree. I spoke with some of them a few weeks ago.

“Of course we remember the disaster,” said one, “though we never talk much about it. But we remember!`

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