Travel With The Thayers: #48 Belle Island

#48 Belle Island

August 30, 2019

The ferry to Belle Island doesn’t apparently run on a dedicated schedule. It crosses the bay for twenty minutes, and when it gets to a side it loads. Interesting car lanes that seem to just hang off the walls!

By the way, all stairs up have an insignia like the puffin for this side. Then you push hard on a big button and the door slides open. No one is allowed to stay in their cars during the crossing. This is standard on all of the Newfoundland ferries.

Welcome to Belle Island!

The #2 Mine Historic Mine Underground Tour was first. The Belle Island Community Museum is housed here, with a café and gift shop.

Our guide, Brian gave us an excellent tour. The province requires everyone to wear a hard hat into the mine. Children’s’ bike helmets are provided for kids.

I believe there were 6 mines here below Belle Island that covers 71 square acres, under the island and sea. Belle Island only occupies 27 square miles. The brown map shows the mine. The white path down the center descends at a 10% grade for three miles extending under Conception Bay. This path is called the Main Slope. The tour took us 640 feet down and included the adjoining white areas. The brown blocks are called pillars. 60% of the mine in one area is removed and 40% provides the pillars to support the top of the mine and in this case all of Belle Island. You walk the shafts: 35 minutes one way, and the other way you could walk for 3.5 hours.

The mine walls rise up 17 feet full of iron ore that is 51% pure. The piece he passed around showed the ore’s hefty weight.

The path into the mine down the main slope has been created for tourists.

The original slope was constantly wet and slippery. The main slope also included two railway tracks: one for empty cars going down and full cars coming up.

As early at 1610 iron ore was suspected to be here. The mine actually began operation in 1902. The mines were lit with small white utility candles.

Candles were used to light the mine and each miner from 1902 to about 1912. The invention of the carbide light provided better lighting between 1912 and 1934. By the way….hard hats didn’t arrive until 1935 and they came with battery packs.

In 1902 miners wore their own hats, sometimes knit caps, and attached a small candle to their hats for light. This photograph shows some of those candles in caps. (This same photo showed up in our Geo Center tour a few days later)

The mine shafts were odd numbers on the right and even numbers on the left. Men would be assigned a tunnel to work each day

In the early day, the full cars were pulled up the main slope with Clydesdale horses. Several stables occupied part of the mine: about 10-12 horses were in each stable. A total of 250 horses lived for 30 days in the mines. Once a month the horses were taken to the top and allowed to live in a pasture for 30 days before returning to the mines. The first horses all went blind after 30 days in the dark. So they learned to use 5 blindfolds and remove them gradually in the pasture. The horses were replaced with machinery in 1950.

At this point in the tour, Brian turned out the lights and showed us just how much light a candle gave off. Not much! Then he blew out the candle so we could experience the blackness.

About 2200 men worked underground doing three main jobs:

For this tour they got three previous miners to come and pose at their job. The driller pictured here was Brian’s grandfather who worked the mine for decades

Driller: He used several drill bits to make 12 holes, each 15 feet long. Then he put dynamite in and blew the holes.

Scaler: He came in next and held a 35 lb scaling bar over his head all shift and cleaned the ceiling so nothing would drop down later.

Shoveler: Two men shoveled the coal. Each coal car held 1.8 tons of ore. In one ten hour shift they were to fill 20 cars. …thus each man shoveled 182 tons per shift.

The lunch room tried to keep lunches from the rats. Most men tried to have a metal lunch pail, but not everyone could afford one. The mine rats were fat and happy. He told us icky stories about the rats. But every miner knew if the rats were moving out of the area you’d better be right behind them, because something bad was about to happen.

One of the other jobs in the mine was the constant removal of water at the bottom of the slope. The water seeped through the rocks and flowed down the grade. The water was fresh and pure and used for the horses. No one has removed the water for the last 50 years, and it now has risen to where the tour ends. It will now rise any further because it has reached the level of the island cliffs and seeps out through those rocks. Brian says divers come from all over to explore this deep water lake here in the mine.

Brian told us lots of stories he has learned from his grandfather and others that worked the mines. One told of an 11 year old that came to work in the mine and stayed for 50 years. Child labor was used. He told of a man who slipped on the main slope as a car was being pulled up and lost his arm. He too returned to the mine, because he had a family to feed.

We returned to the museum. This is the 35 lb. scaler under the table was held over his head to scrape the ceiling for a 10 hour shift.

Belle Island mines supplied large quantities of iron ore to Germany. When WWII broke out they quit selling to Germany. This is the only community in North American to take a direct hit by a Nazi U-boat. Germany got mad and came over and torpedoed their bulk ore ships. One torpedo hit the dock.

This is the man who commanded the U-boat. Several years ago, his daughter came to visit the #2 museum. She donated his Nazi commendations, awards and medals. Some the awards are signed by Hitler.

The mine started in 1902 and closed in 1966. The Belle Island mine could not compete with the open pit mine in Labrador. Plus Labrador has a rail connection to the North American continent. It simply was too costly. The Labrador iron ore is not as pure a quality, but the ease of getting it outweighs that fact. 82 million tons of ore was taken, but 2.5 billion tons is still there. Perhaps someday they will reopen this mine. Derrille and I really enjoyed this tour!

Tailing piles rise above the museum.

We drove around the island to check it out. They have some murals in place, but they do not compare with the ones we saw in Botwood.

Canadians really honor those who have served their country, especially their war veterans and those who died in combat. Some of these men were on the ore carriers bombed by the Germans.

The Seaman’s Memorial honors those who lost their lives in WWII when the ore carriers were bombed.

Next to the Seaman’s Memorial a very noisy group of ducks and ducklings inhabited a small pond.

I heard the quacking get increasingly louder and turned to look. Boy did they notice that Jay was munching on something tasty, and they decided he was their next best friend.

As we left the area we passed another grotto. This one is dedicated to the Sacred Heart.

We had fun trying to find the gun emplacement. We finally found them just below the Catholic cemetery. The guys walked to them.

The lighthouse on the north end of the island used to sit out on the point of land. But it needed to be relocated because of the erosion, which Philip the light keeper feels comes from global warming.