The Seaham Colliery explosion of Wednesday October 25 1871 occurred at
11.30 pm, otherwise the death toll of 26 would have been much higher
by now the pit was employing 1100 men and boys. The shock was felt at
Seaham Harbour, John Clark, aged 9, sitting on the surface in a cabin
near the pit shaft, was blown 10 yards by the explosion.
The force of the blast was such that many ponies were killed in their
underground stables 1.5 miles away from the epicentre. Two men named
Hutchinson, father and son, working as 'marrows' (marras), fired the
shot which triggered the blast. The father, Thomas senior, survived
the explosion but was badly injured. For days he hovered between life
and death and it was thought he could not survive, but survive he did
for he was destined to be killed in the 1880 explosion. Thomas
Hutchinson junior left a pregnant widow and two children.
Seaham Colliery, 8th September 1880, saw a massive explosion, that
claimed 164 lives out of a shift of 230 men. It occurred, without
warning, at 2.20 a.m. in the morning, during a maintenance shift, when
no coal was being worked and thus no escape of explosive gas was
expected. The cause seems to have been a shot fired in an area of
stone, where there was a considerable amount of dust on the ground
that was disturbed during the work preparing a 'refuge hole'; and it
was this dust suspended in the air that ignited with tremendous
effect.
No one from the immediate area survived; many others were trapped and
died before rescuers could unblock the shafts and reach them. The
tragedy, the second worst in the long mining history of County Durham
and the third worst in the history of the Great Northern Coalfield.
The families of those dead or missing were unable to get anywhere near
the colliery. The crowd round the pit reached an estimated 14,000 on
the Wednesday night.
By Sunday there were an estimated 40,000 people in the vicinity to see
the first mass funerals Of the 164 men and boys killed in the 1880
disaster 32 were not resident at Seaham Colliery Pit Village. 28 of
these lived at Seaham Harbour. Two (the brothers John and David Knox)
lived at Seaton Village. One (John Watson) lived at Murton. One
(Robert Wharton) lived at Sunderland. The badly-faded gravestones of
at least two of the victims of the Seaham Colliery disaster can be
found leaning against the walls of the disused St. John's graveyard in
Seaham Harbour.
