Chapter II: Fever of the Copper Ore  (continued)

Miraculously, no injuries resulted, as a boy noticed the slumping hillside and shouted to the men underground; but for Betts Cove the cave-in signalled doom. What little interest the Consolidated Mining Company had had in the mine dissolved. The town's population plummeted to the point where in 1884 only 40 miners remained on the site. A further drop in copper prices forced operations to suspend in April. In 1886, the mine's last ore shipment left for Swansea, bringing its total production to 130,682 tons of copper ore and 2450 tons of pyrite. Missionaries visiting the settlement in 1887 found two families surrounded by deteriorating tramways, churches and houses, with the intact buildings being moved to Little Bay.

This was essentially the end of Betts Cove.⁽¹⁵⁾ Yet in recent times the area has gained international fame in the scientific world, as its rocks are of a kind rarely exposed on land. Every year scores of geologists inspect the cove and, for a time, make its hills sound again with the ringing of of hammers.

Little Bay Mine

The Little Bay mine, which lay 17 miles from Betts Cove, was dubbed in its prime as the 'El Dorado of Newfoundland', so highly did people regard its ore deposits. Delusions of grandeur aside, the Little Bay mine resembled the legendary South American goldfields slightly in that its riches became the focal point of greed ans scandal. Not even subsequent Newfoundland governments have equalled the political intrigues that characterized the mine's early days.

The first victim in the Little Bay saga was its discoverer. In the spring of 1878 a hunter, Robert Colbourne of Wild Bight, noticed copper mineralization near the shores of Little Bay on land that already belonged to others. He unwisely broadcast his find and had to reveal its whereabouts to the claimholders for £10, a chest of tea and a tub of butter. Colbourne died two years afterwards in dire poverty, but the claimholders became wealthy men. One of them was Dr. Henry Eales of London. Another was Adolph Guzman of the Betts Cove Mining Company.

Because the Little Bay discovery coincided with depletion of the high-grade and most easily accessible ore at Betts Cove, Guzman had little difficulty in persuading Ellershausen to lease the Little Bay claim for a royalty of 8 shillings per ton. Mine development began in August 1878, with men and machinery floated from Betts Cove across Green Bay to Little Bay. While some men transformed the silent wilderness into a mine site with houses, a tramway and pier, others assembled the first shipment of ore. Reverend Harvey visited Little Bay two weeks after the opening and left us this vivid description:

"After a brief pause we started for the mine, Mr. Ellershausen leading the way with rapid strides...till panting and exhausted, we reach the summit, scramble through a little morass, and there is Little Bay mine. What a sight we gaze upon here! It is simply a great cliff of copper ore that we are looking at...On the face of this copper cliff the miners are at work quarrying literally the great blocks of copper. The bottom of the cliff is strewed with these glittering masses, small and great, and piles are being heaped up for shipment..."⁽¹⁶⁾

Miners sank shafts in November and by December had shipped 10,000 tons of ore to Swansea - an amazing feat, considering that every pound of ore had to be blasted, raised and loaded by hand. If Harvey's account is at all reliable, it is no wonder that The Newfoundland Consolidated Copper Mining Company desired so strongly to lay claim to the Little Bay mine.

Transfer of the Betts Cove, Little Bay and other Notre Dame Bay mines from the Betts Cove Mining Company to The Newfoundland Consolidated Copper Mining Company in December 1880 and January 1881 came on the brink of the Newfoundland government's decision to build a railway from St. John's to Halls Bay. Not since introduction of responsible government had a matter been debated as fiercely in the House of Assembly. Such was the publicity afforded to the issue that it attracted attention in the United States. When the Newfoundland government called tenders for the railway, a group of Americans headed by Albert L. Blackman formed the Newfoundland Railway Company. In March 1881 they won the bid. At this, a new and more intense wave of publicity broke with the rumour that the people backing the Newfoundland Railway Company also backed The Newfoundland Consolidated Copper Mining Company, and that the Newfoundland government was secretly involved with both firms.⁽¹⁷⁾

Sir William Whiteway. (II/4.) (23Kb)

The first concrete evidence of a connection between the mining company and government came in June 1881: the Evening Telegram released a copy of the Consolidated Mining Company's prospectus, showing Newfoundland's Premier Whiteway to be one of its directors.⁽¹⁸⁾ Sir William Whiteway's position in the company was predictable, as he had owned shares in local mining companies since the 1850s and had held power of attorney for several of Ellershausen's business dealings. What incensed the press (and the opposition party) was not just that Whiteway could use his office to the mining company's advantage, but also that he, as chairman of the government committee to consider the Blackman railway proposal, had threatened to resign if the committee rejected the bid of Blackman's Newfoundland Railway Company⁽¹⁹⁾, which even then was suspected of having associations with the Consolidated Mining Company.

Evidence suggests that both Whiteway and Ellershausen had vested interests in the railway company as well. In the summer of 1881, Ellershausen sailed to England to seek additional financial backing for the Consolidated Mining Company. He secured Messrs. Matheson and Company of London to be the firm's major creditors and returned to Newfoundland on 26 August 1881 with members of the Matheson company. Two weeks later Whiteway arrived from England on the same boat as Blackman amid vehement press accusations that Ellershausen, Whiteway, Blackman and the Mathesons had been conducting critical business in London. The local reporters would have relished this letter written on 3 September 1881 from Ellershausen to Whiteway: "I have nothing mentioned to anybody about my affair with Blackman and as long as he does not mention anything to anybody, I shall keep quiet, but not otherwise."⁽²⁰⁾