Chapter I: Dawn of Mining Days  (continued)

Frederick Gisbourne, pioneer proponent of Newfoundland mining industry. (I/3.) (25Kb)

Frederick Gisbourne was born in England in 1824, emigrated to Canada at the age of 21 and is best known for his work in telegraphy. Fortunately for Newfoundland mining, he went bankrupt in 1853 while laying the first cable across Newfoundland: his backers betrayed him by dishonouring the bills of his Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company.⁽¹¹⁾ Rather than succumb to misfortune, he took advantage of mineralogical knowledge gleaned during his months of surveying the cable route and went prospecting.

Between 1853 and 1860, Gisbourne intermittently explored the coasts of Placentia, Exploits, Bonavista and Notre Dame bays in a whaler, and tried to mine copper ore in Conception Bay. Neither his travels nor his mines made him rich, but they brought him the job with the Newfoundland Mining Association. They also enabled him to write the following letter to Governor Bannerman on 10 October 1860:

"...Having traversed large sections of the Country during the last 9 years, and having inspected the several localities hereinafter named, I now furnish a list of Mines opened to date....

List of mineral deposits worked during the years 1855 to 1860:

"Harbor Mille," Fortune Bay,		Copper and Silver.
"Turk's Head," Conception Bay,		Peacock Copper.
"English Ridge," ditto,		Grey Copper.
"La Manche," Placentia Bay,		Galena or Lead.
"Frenchman's Hill,"		Peacock Copper.
"Griffin's Point,"		Ditto.
"Sweetman's Island,"		Silver Lead.
"Strouter," Placentia Bay,		Ditto.
"Rockey Cove,"		Grey Copper.
"Stoney House Cove,"		Ditto.
"Lawn,"		Silver Lead.
"Paquet," French Shore,		Yellow Copper.
"Terra Nova," Little Bay,*		Mundic and Copper.

In all 13 mines have been opened during the past five years, at an outlay of £50,000 Sterling, while the returns therefrom have thus far been but £18,000...."⁽¹²⁾

The flurry of activity shown by the list as compared with the dearth of mines in Newfoundland ten years before reflected two changes in Britain's economic policy. In 1853, Britain abolished its import duty on copper ore; and in 1855, Newfoundland joined the Reciprocity Treaty between Britain and the United States whereby all metallic ores were duty-free.

Gisbourne's list was incomplete. It contained prospects that never actually produced ore and yet excluded the Trump Island copper mine in Notre Dame Bay, which opened in 1860 under master mariner Francis Taylor of Carbonear. Taylor shipped about 280 tons of ore to Swansea in 1864. Nonetheless, six of the listed mines were productive. These were the Turk's Head, English Ridge, La Manche, Stoney House, Lawn and Terra Nova mines.

Earliest Mines

Charles Fox Bennett. (I/2.) (21Kb)

Frederick Gisbourne probably discovered the two copper deposits located at Turk's Head and English Ridge near Marysvale in Conception Bay. In 1856, he and Charles Bennett incorporated The Turk's Head Mining Company and The English Ridge Mining Company and brought out Cornish miners to work the orebodies. The partnership of the two men, however, was brief, as Bennett reneged on the agreement around 1858 because miners had managed to extract, from both mines, only 31 tons of ore in three years. (As we shall see, Gisbourne was not the last man to suffer from Bennett's unorthodox ways.) Gisbourne sold the ore in Britain for £400, a sum that could sustain neither him nor the mines; and early in 1859 he departed for the Middle East to lay a cable across the Red Sea.⁽¹³⁾

Gisbourne returned to Newfoundland in the fall of 1859, replenished with money and with plans for his mining properties. He floated the St. John's United Copper and Lead Mining Company and blatantly advertised that the two Conception Bay mines had sold over £1000 worth of ore. St. John's businessmen knew better. They refused to back the company, leaving him no alternative but to close down the mines again in 1860.

Although Gisbourne abandoned practical mining after 1860, he made a lasting contribution to the Newfoundland mining industry. Through his and others' urgings, the government instituted the Geological Survey of Newfoundland in 1864, a body that became invaluable to, and instrumental in, advancing Newfoundland mineral exploration for the next 53 years.

Frederick Gisbourne was also involved, albeit indirectly, with the discovery of the La Manche lead mine in Placentia Bay. He visited New York in January 1854 to confront financial backers of the Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company and, while there, mentioned his aborted cable scheme to the wealthy American capitalist, Cyrus Field.⁽¹⁴⁾ Field seized and expanded upon the idea and later in 1854 incorporated the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean. As workers from Field's company were surveying the cable route on the east side of Placentia Bay in 1855, they 'discovered' lead ore in the cliffs near La Manche.⁽¹⁵⁾