Chapter II: Fever of the Copper Ore  (continued)

The manipulations of Whiteway and Ellershausen apparently reached beyond the formation of the Consolidated Mining Company and into the very ownership of the Little Bay property. Claim records show that Adolph Guzman and a Twillingate doctor, William Stirling, filed the first claim for Little Bay on 14 October 1876, but that Stirling's name was replaced by that of Ellershausen's friend, Dr. Henry Eales, immediately before the property was transferred to the Betts Cove Mining Company Limited on 17 December 1878. Stirling managed to regain partial possession of the Little Bay lease on 23 April 1881, but on 17 May 1882 had to share the fee-simple grant with Guzman, Eales and Ellershausen's son-in-law, William Colchester. A series of communications between the parties involved reveal that Stirling deplored the joint arrangement. They also hint that Whiteway had more than a casual hand in fabricating the overpopulated fee-simple grant.⁽²¹⁾

What did Little Bay miners know of these intrigues? It is highly unlikely that the details ever reached them. They, at any rate, had more immediate troubles to contend with, for in April 1883 the Consolidated Mining Company put the mine on contract and laid off 100 men. The remaining workers struck briefly in protest at the time and struck again a month later, having since formed a union of sorts. This precipitated a general meeting at which mine manager E.C. Wallace declared that he approved of the union and would give all miners an equal share of the work. The village minister arose next to preach the immorality of preventing one's fellow man from working. The point was made, and the miners returned underground.

All labour disputes and job shortages vanished in the summer of 1883 when the first smelters came to Little Bay. The original smelting works resembled those at Betts Cove in being capable only of roasting ore over coal fires to a regulus of 32 per cent copper. In 1887, however, the Consolidated Mining Company installed refining smelters that reduced roasted ore further into copper ingots. The process provided highly lucrative, and from 1887 until 1892 copper ingots formed the mine's entire output. Miners' wages rose accordingly and in the Twillingate Sun of 20 March 1886 were cited as being as follows:

engineers		6 to 8 shillings daily
miners		6 shillings and 6 pence
strikers		5 shillings and 6 pence
men and boys on copper floor		4 shillings and 6 pence
men in jigging mill and smelters		4 shillings and 6 pence
boys employed about the mine works		2 shillings

These wages were fairly typical of most Notre Dame copper mines of the period.

Meanwhile, dramatic changes were happening to the world copper market. Beginning in the early 1880s, American and Spanish copper production had risen sharply; simultaneously, copper consumption had increased because of the new electrical industry. Alarmed that soaring copper production and consumption would severely devalue the metal, an influential French firm attempted to control international copper production by making contracts with the world's major copper companies, including Messsrs. Matheson and Company.⁽²²⁾ However, the resultant escalation in copper prices rejuvenated so many dead or lethargic mines outside the agreement that production actually increased. High prices and high production could not co-exist, and in March 1889 the copper market collapsed.

It took some months for the full effect of the crash to reach Little Bay; in the summer of 1889 the deepest of its seven shafts still employed 400 hundred men. However, before long the mine's depth became its undoing, as the diminished copper values aggravated the already heavy costs of pumping and hoisting in the 1400-foot shaft. Hugh Matheson of Messrs. Matheson (The Newfoundland Consolidated Copper Mining Company's main creditors) grew more concerned with each passing month, particularly after the company's long-dormant New York board of directors pulled a surprise election in early 1889 and voted Messrs. Matheson and Company out of its presidential capacity. Hugh Matheson then pulled a surprise of his own and in August launched a petition for the liquidation of the Consolidated Mining Company.

The much-publicized Matheson petition revealed that the mining company owed its creditors £229,285, a figure grossly exceeding its total assets.⁽²³⁾ Despite outraged protests from the New York board of directors, the court decreed that the Mathesons could continue to manage the company's affairs. In effect, the petition was postponed pending further development.

As Matheson feared, the situation at Little Bay worsened shortly thereafter, and in 1892 the Consolidated company had to buy 30,000 tons of Tilt Cove ore to keep the Little Bay smelters in operation. In October Matheson filed another petition against the Consolidated company, this time successfully: the New York directors sullenly but silently would up their affairs. The Little Bay mine worked for two more years under the Mathesons and finally closed down in July 1894, reduced to inactivity by low copper prices, low ore reserves and low morale among its miners.

The Little Bay mine might have remained inactive for many years had not the 1897 improvement in copper stocks brought a veritable bevy of foreign geologists and mining engineers to Newfoundland. One man, Joseph H. Collins, returned to England pursued by rumours that he planned to reopen some of the Notre Dame Bay copper mines. The rumours were substantiated on 8 March 1898 when he incorporated The Newfoundland Copper Company Limited to exploit ten square miles of Notre Dame Bay copper properties, including the Little Bay mine site.

Thus began a brief phase of prosperity for Little Bay, during which miners picked over ore dumps of the old workings and sank two new shafts in Sleepy Hollow about 1000 feet west of the original shafts. The smelters were revived, and the community thrived once again beneath the acrid aroma of sulphur fumes.

A visitor to Little Bay in 1899 might have complained of the sulphur smell, but would not have faulted the visual aspect of the settlement. The town of 2000 people was divided into the Loading Wharf and the Bight. The former location contained the pier, smelters and company officials' homes; sulphur smoke shrouded the site, making breathing laborious and vegetation virtually non-existent. The greener Bight housed most of the miners, one church, company stores and the telegraph office. Between the two areas stood a steep hill crowned by an Anglican and a Roman Catholic church, both of which could be reached only by a long flight of stairs that ascended from the village below.⁽²⁴⁾

However, a visitor to Little Bay in 1904 would have seen an entirely altered picture. The smelters by then sat dormant, company officials were gone and the community lay ravaged by fire. The Newfoundland Copper Company directors had tired of Newfoundland's seven-month shipping season and had withdrawn from Little Bay in June 1901 to work copper properties in Chile. Another company optioned the mine in 1902, but gave up in August 1904 after a fire obliterated most of the town and mine offices. Because the fire also destroyed all mine records it is possible only to estimate that about 200,000 tons of copper ore left Little Bay for Swansea between 1878 and 1902.*

One last detail remains to be told of the Little Bay mine. Some of the final copper ingots manufactured in the smelters did not go to Swansea; instead, they were moulded into an heraldic shield that was presented to the Duke of York during his 1902 tour of Newfoundland.⁽²⁵⁾