The produce of the collieries situated further up the Tyne, where the river is no longer navigable by sea-going craft, is conveyed in a kind of oval vessels, called keels, to the port of Newcastle, or its out-stations, North and South Shields, where it is discharged into larger ships.
Newcastle may well be called the capital of King Coal. Once a town of military importance, as the old, grim-looking donjon-keep of Robert Curthose, the son of the Conqueror, still testifies, it entirely owes its modern importance to the treasures of coal adjacent to its walls. Its quays, black and sooty as the mineral on which its prosperity is founded, are lined with a dense row of counting-houses, and before them in the river still denser rows of colliers lie at anchor; while between both ebbs and flows a black-looking crowd—for all here wear the livery of the article to which all owe their bread. Some idea may be formed of the vast activity waving to and fro in this chief artery of the coal trade, from the fact that the annual arrivals in the Tyne are not less than 13,000 or 14,000, 10,000 of which are on account of the coal trade.
Sunderland, the great port of the river Wear, where annually more than 10,000 cargoes of coal are shipped to all ports of the world; Hartlepool, a town of modern date with magnificent docks; Stockton-on-Tees, and a number of minor places of shipment on the coast, likewise owe their prosperity to coal, so that probably no other article of trade gives constant employment to so many vessels within so confined a territory.
From Tynemouth Priory, a ruin romantically situated on a bold promontory, the visitor frequently enjoys a magnificent marine picture; for when, after long-continued easterly gales, the wind changes to a westerly breeze, many hundred vessels—mostly colliers—put to sea together in a single tide, and distribute themselves over the ocean with their prows turned in almost every direction, some southward and coast-wise, for English ports, for the Channel, and for the southern countries of Europe; others, northward for Scotland and the Norwegian coast; and others, again, due east, for Denmark and the Baltic—all sinking deep in the water, weighed down by that mineral fuel which is more valuable for England than if it were replaced by the mines of Mexico or the diggings of Australia.
Yet a few years, and probably the dingy and crawling craft, which perform the chief part in this animated scene, will be abolished. Clipper screw steamers are rapidly taking their place, and the railroads daily transport a greater proportion of the seven or eight million tons of coal which are annually devoured by our huge metropolis.
Before quitting the Northern coal districts, a few words may be added on the swarthy population whose labours bring their subterranean riches to the light. The chief underground workmen are the hewers, who either remove the coal with pickaxes, or sometimes blast it with powder. To hew well is a work of skill as well as of strength, and men must be early practised in it to earn high wages by piece-work. In tolerably thick seams of coal of five and six feet and upwards, hewing is more a work of strength than skill; but in the narrower seams skill predominates. In these the arm is confined, the blow is shortened, the pick is impeded. To gain space by adaptation of position, you may see one hewer kneeling down on one or both knees, another squatting, another stooping or bending double, and occasionally one or more lying on their sides or on their backs, picking and pegging away at the seam above them. If the seam be hard as well as thin, and the man’s position confined, it is manifest that he cannot get his strength to bear in full, or his full measure of coals. In such cases he is bathed in perspiration, in a state of semi-nudity, enveloped in floating and clinging coal-dust. If to this we add the very faint light imparted by the Davy lamps, the constantly thickening atmosphere, the exhalations from living beings, exaggerated by heat, and not diminished by any free current of air, and remember that eight hours is the usual day’s work of the hewer, we must surely confess that few men have their strength more hardly tasked, or earn their bread in a more laborious manner.
COAL HEWERS AT WORK.
To relieve this arduous toil, coal-cutting machines have lately been devised, which are worked either by steam or by compressed air, and will probably in time perform a great part of the hewer’s labour, as those already in employment appear to be well adapted to the purpose for which they are contrived, and further improvements in their construction will no doubt be introduced. Coal-cutting machines, which act either by picking or gouging, have been found to work more economically than manual labour, while at the same time much less coal is destroyed and reduced to slack. A matter of still more importance is the diminished risk to the persons and lives of the employed, who, when working in a constrained position, and consequently unable to relieve themselves from the fall of a superincumbent mass of coal, are frequently crushed to death. The application of machinery to cutting coal gives another advantage of national importance, as, by enabling the working to be carried into the deeper seams of coal which lie at so high a temperature as to present serious or insurmountable difficulty to handwork, it will render available to posterity new and hitherto inaccessible stores of coal.
The hewers may possibly fear to be thrown out of employment by its introduction on an extensive scale; but as it will relieve them from their most irksome drudgery, and allow them to reserve their strength for less injurious trial, they cannot but be thankful for the aid which it affords them.