Chapter III: Gold, Fools and Gambled Fortunes (continued)

As the confused and unemployed York Harbour miners returned to their villages, The Western Cooper Company deliberated its future. Some directors, jaundiced by the experiences with previous lessees, suggested working the mine themselves; other advocated abandoning it. In the end they did neither, but chose to option it on 24 September 1909 to a group of London mining engineers and merchants constituting the York Harbour Mine (Newfoundland) Limited.

Sometime in the midst of the legal proceedings and change of management, the popular Hedley Smythe left Newfoundland. Whether because of his absence or because the local people had washed their hands of the mine, the English company suffered from a chronic lack of manpower. Mine manager L.R. Jenkins outdid himself trying to accommodate the workers. He ordered the construction of new barracks and a small shop near the mine. He paid the men $45 per week and let them either board for $2 per week in the barracks and return home on the weekends or live permanently in houses at the site, where miner James Strugget gave Sunday school classes to the children of resident families. The company president, John Moubray, attempted to please miners by writing a booklet entitled "Notes on Some of the Common Minerals to be Found in Newfoundland and Labrador" for "fishermen and liviers". Yet nothing halted the rapid turnover of miners. As seasonal lumbermen kept replacing seasonal fishermen, Jenkins had to place repeated advertisements in the Western Star: "More practical miners needed at York Harbour".

Ignoring the labour shortage, Jenkins assured the company directors of the mine's quality and potential longevity. Taking him at his word, the directors approached the Newfoundland government with an offer to smelt ore from other Newfoundland mines, should the government install a copper smelter in York Harbour. The government approved of the proposal and in 1910 and 1911 passed two copper smelting acts (see page 29).

Strangely, the smelter never materialized. Perhaps the apathy of other mine proprietors negated the acts' intent; perhaps the government came to doubt York Harbour's suitability as a smelter site; or perhaps the company lost interest when one of the levels foundered, killing a miner and halting operations for weeks. Almost certainly, the company reassessed its future and decided against the idea of a smelter. By 1913, upper levels of the mine were either collapsed or depleted of ore; and as excavations began on deeper levels, word arrived that the company was pulling out. The last load of ore left York Harbour for the United States in July 1913, bringing the company's total shipments to 15,000 tons. By September the mine was closed and the York Harbour Mine (Newfoundland) Limited wound up.

After the English company departed, the abandoned barracks sheltered itinerant trappers until the wood rotted with age. Nearby inhabitants removed most of the mine equipment, leaving the rest to fall into rust and decay. As the store at the mine site slowly disintegrated and exposed its contents to the elements, bagsful of hopseeds dispersed into the wind, took root among the ruins and can be seen still growing there today.⁽¹⁶⁾

Goose Cove Mine

The only other notable copper mine of the French Shore lay at Goose Cove, Hare Bay, on the Northern Peninsula. In 1904, Erastus Moores of Tilt Cove staked the deposit and showed it to an English geologist named Brenton Symons. The property excited Symons. He formed The Cove Copper Mines Limited and on 16 October 1907 leased the claim from Moores.

Prior to visiting Newfoundland, Symons had supervised successful mining ventures in Nicaragua, Turkey, Hungary, Algeria, Venezuela, Transylvania, California, Nova Scotia and Mexico.⁽¹⁷⁾ It is unclear whether his mobility expressed a love of travel or an inability to hold a job; in any case his stay in Newfoundland was brief. He spent $40,000 on elaborate surface equipment and then found that he lacked money to actually work the mine. The fallen copper market made it impossible to raise additional funds, and around 1911 Symons relinquished the property lease, leaving behind 1800 tons of raised ore and thousands of dollars in machinery and buildings.

Gold Mines

Gold, more than any other metal, stirs people's imagination and lures them from afar to pursue the elusive substance. Unfortunately, it has proven more elusive than alluring in Newfoundland, as evidenced by the Island's limited volume of gold production, most of which originated as a by-product of copper and base metal mines rather than as 'free gold' from quartz veins. The only productive Newfoundland mines worked specifically for gold lay on the French Shore at Mings Bight and at Sops Arm.

The first people to stake claims at Mings Bight were also some of the original mining entrepreneurs of Newfoundland: Smith McKay and Charles Bennett. They acquired a claim along the west shore of Mings Bight in 1877, followed shortly afterwards by Adolph Guzman who, deliberately or otherwise, overlapped his claim boundary onto the McKay-Bennett property. While trenching his claim for copper in 1879, Adolph Guzman intersected a vein of gold-bearing quartz. He had no time to pursue the matter further, however, as his claim lay too close to the coastline and the McKay-Bennett land for the government's liking.

Another Mings Bight claimholder, Captain A.B. Cunningham,⁽¹⁸⁾ received unwelcomed French attention to his gold prospect around 1883. His description of the affair probably serves as an account of many similar visitations of the day:

"...I visited the workings in order to report progress and take reliable samples of the minerals obtained. I was thus occupied when one morning a French man-o'-war steamed into the Bight, a party of armed blue jackets landed, and planted the French flag over the mouth of the principal shaft. I very naturally demanded of the lieutenant in command an explanation of these high-handed doings, and was by him referred to the admiral, who was on board the man-o'-war.

"I promptly interviewed the latter on his ship and was received with greatest politeness. A copy of the French Treaty was produced, by which I found that work on a permanent character could not be carried on without one half mile of the foreshore..."⁽¹⁹⁾

Such were the hazards of mining along the French Shore until well into the 1890s. In 1897, Daniel J. Henderson staked two claims near the Cunningham property for himself and A.J. Harvey and over the next five years explored them at his leisure without finding more than traces of gold. A few weeks after Henderson's death in December 1902, John R. Stewart (the former Little Bay mine manager) received permission to prospect the claims. Whether through luck or skill, Stewart located gold-bearing gravel deposits at once and in the spring of 1903 found the source outcrop. Harvey had since become engrossed in the York Harbour copper mine and optioned the Mings Bight claim to Stewart who, when finances allowed, formed the Goldenville Mining Company Limited and opened up the Mings Bight or Goldenville gold mine.

Some of the best miners in Notre Dame Bay worked in the Goldenville mine, including one eccentric person named Cody, who habitually slept with dynamite to warm it up for the next day's blasting. The men sank a shaft, built a tramway and in the summer of 1904 shipped 23 tons of ore to Nova Scotia. The ore's successful amalgamation into an 11-ounce gold brick⁽²⁰⁾ encouraged the Goldenville Mining Company to buy a concentrating and crushing plant in August 1905; however, the plant suffered engine failure almost from the day of installation and over the following summer yielded another 147 ounces of gold bullion and concentrates worth $3000 - about one-tenth of the company's expenditures. Rather than lose more money, Stewart terminated gold mining in the fall of 1906.