Chapter II: Fever of the Copper Ore  (continued)

As more and more men became involved in the search for 'proprieties', the bureaucratic burden of the copper boom fell heavily upon the shoulders of Newfoundland's surveyor general, John Warren. In the space of five years, his previously peaceful office became a circus of prospectors, politicians and mining personnel, all anxious to obtain mining licenses, leases and fee-simple grants in accordance with the latest mineral regulations.* The inevitable legal conflicts over claim boundaries and possession finally led Warren to hire extra assistants for the Notre Dame Bay district, one of whom was a retired sea captain named Robert G. Knight. Knight was 45 years old when he became a deputy surveyor and, by chance, discovered the Betts Cove orebody.

Betts Cove Mine

The Betts Cove mine lay 8 miles south of Tilt Cove and exemplified all that is romantic in mining. It turned men into millionaires and was worked by a German baron before passing into oblivion 15 years after its discovery.

Modern deputy surveyors, like other government employees, are strictly forbidden to use information gathered at public expense to further their private ends. In the 1860s, however, no such regulations restricted the initiative of Robert Knight. While pursuing his official work as deputy surveyor along the western shores of Notre Dame Bay, he obtained mining licences for copper deposits at Betts Cove in 1865, Nickeys Nose in 1868 and Burtons Pond in 1868. Higher government officers also indulged in extracurricular activities. When surveyor general John Warren heard of Knight's good fortune, he and other Liberal Members of the House of Assembly formed the Notre Dame Mining Company in 1869. At the same time, they persuaded Robert Knight to join them and to transfer his claims to the company.

Rather than following Knight's suggestion of exploring the Betts Cove claim, the Notre Dame Mining Company chose in 1869 to work the far less promising Burtons Pond discovery.⁽⁴⁾ Even after the Burtons Pond mine failed in 1872, the company showed no interest in Betts Cove other than demanding that Knight forfeit his share in the claim in lieu of paying a debt that he owed company directors. Knight died in poverty on 18 January 1873, resentful to the end of his associates' behaviour. The Betts Cove property might have remained unexploited indefinitely had not Baron Francis von Ellershausen entered the Newfoundland mining scene.

Baron Francis von Ellershausen came to Newfoundland at a time when its mining industry needed the catalysing influence of a mining expert with vision, courage and lots of money. He fitted the bill perfectly.

Ellershausen was born in Saxony, Germany in 1820 and came to Canada in 1862 to work as a mining engineer in the Nova Scotian goldfields. The attractions of private enterprise caused him to leave mining in 1864 and to develop a pulp and paper mill on timber land along Nova Scotia's St. Croix River. So lucrative was this business that by 1870 he had built a mansion on the site and had furnished it with French mirrors, commissioned paintings and a piano, which he played with considerable skill. Surrounding his home were cottages of German immigrants to whom he had offered housing and employment following their being shipwrecked off Sable Island.⁽⁵⁾ These cottages together with the mansion became known as Ellershause.⁽⁶⁾

Ellershausen built an exceptionally elegant home near the mansion for a friend, a mining engineer named Adolph Guzman, assuming that the man would marry one of his daughters. In 1872, however, the girl refused Guzman, who thereupon fled to Newfoundland and began to stake claims in Notre Dame Bay - not for himself, but for Ellershausen. Charles Bennett once maintained that he had sparked the baron's interest in Newfoundland minerals.⁽⁷⁾ The assertion probably stemmed from wishful thinking, for it was almost certainly Guzman's endeavours that brought Ellershausen to Newfoundland.

Francis Ellershausen landed in Notre Dame Bay in the spring of 1874 and set to work with lightening speed. Within two months of his arrival he had visited Betts Cove and optioned the claim from its owners for a royalty of 8 shillings per ton of mined ore. Next, he sailed to Britain and organized the Betts Cove Mining Company with two Glasgow capitalists, William Dickson and Walter MacKenzie. Leaving them to conclude financial arrangements, he returned to Ellershause to hire 30 German men as miners.

Ellershausen was a man of peculiar temperament. At a farewell party given in Ellershause for the departing men the village teacher joked to the crowd that the miners were going to a land of cod and copper. Ellershausen sprung to his feet saying: "The land which you call cod and copper is bringing you your bread and butter!", and stalked from the hall with family in tow.⁽⁸⁾ The party disintegrated in embarrassment at once.