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Western Morning News 2/1/1973
Geevor mine still has
promising future
NEWS THAT the Levant mine,- St. Just, whose dramatic rescue from the sea three years ago made mining engineering history, cannot be reworked, is a major disappointment in Cornish mining circles. But, as a spokesman for Geevor mine said recently, although it is a disappointment it is not a disaster. -,Apart from restarting the old mine, the main object of the undertaking was to dry out the flooded mine workings around Geevor and make it possible for those areas to be developed, particularly the promising underwater lodes.
This, at the time, was vital, to Geevor, for the ore reserves of the mine were
then on the way to being worked out, and unless the operation was undertaken
and undertaken successfully mining in St. Just might very well come to an end.
Bright outlook
The operation has fortunately been successful, and these areas are now available
for development. Provided the price of tin remains at a remunerative level,
the outlook for Geevor is considered to be reasonably bright.
The work of drying out Levant involved a fantastic combined operation by surface
workers, underground miners, skin divers, and engineers aboard ship which would
have been impossible in any age but the present. The flooding of Levant was
something different from what is normally meant by a "flooded mine." Normally,
this occurs when a mine has been closed down.
The pumps having stopped working the mine is then flooded by an accumulation
of drainage and spring water. This can be cleared, even if at some cost by simply
restarting the pumps.
Caved in
Levant however, was flooded because the roof of one of its undersea workings
caved in and the mine was flooded by the sea up to high-water level.
The 40-fathom level, which is the working concerned, was reputed by the miners
in the old days to have come so close to the sea-bed that they could hear the
rocks being rolled around by the waves and the feeling was so strong that in
1886 they twice refused to go into the mine. In 1869 it was thought the sea
was only 33ft. deep at that point and the roof of the mine 38ft. thick.
A present-day survey however, showed that the sea was 45ft. deep and the roof
of the mine only 26ft. thick.
Vast cavern
Underneath it the mine working, instead of being a mere tunnel, had been opened
out to a cavern with a roof 18ft. wide and. 72ft long which could collapse at
any time.
The job was tackled by anchoring a 35-ton ex-Admiralty motor fishing vessel over the fracture in the sea-bed. Tons of concrete grouting were then pumped under the sea under the direction of frogmen to form a concrete mat 5ft. thick, 40ft. long and 30ft. wide over the hole and the cavern underneath it was filled with concrete 120ft. thick from top to bottom. The situation now is that although extraction of tin from Levant itself has been found to be economically impracticable, a large area of reserves, not previously accessible, is now available.