Mining on Bell Island
Bell Island, an island of about 27 square kilometers, dominates Conception Bay in the north of Avalon. First known as good farmland – contrary to most of Avalon it has good topsoil -, as early as the 1570s there were reports about iron deposits on Bell Island. 1628 iron ore probes were sent to England with the request to analyze them. But it took until 1890 that mining companies seriously began to work here. Developing the site, it became clear that vast amounts of high quality iron ore – a real treasure – waited here in Bell Island to be mined. There was no shortage on customers either: The ever-hungry steel mills in Nova Scotia constantly demanded iron as well as those of the Ruhr-Valley in Germany and others in the U.S.A.
At first the easily accessible iron ore on the surface – bog iron - was exploited, but by 1902 with the opening of a second mine, subsequently named ‚# 2 mine‘ underground mining began. Soon six mines were in operation on the island. And since the sloping ‚beds‘ of iron went on far underneath the ocean, four of the mines – beginning with # 2 mine - extended into the bay, deep beneath the ocean.
Connecting passage
During its high times, # 2 mine was the world’s largest submarine iron ore mine. Applying the ‚room and pillar‘ method – leaving big pillars of rocks untouched to support the mine roof while cutting rooms rather than tunnels into the ore bed -, equipped only with picks and shovels and dynamite sticks the miners arduously dug their cold and dark ways more than two and a half miles into the bay, always betweet 200 and 1600 feet underneath the ocean floor. Their wages at first were 10 cents an hour; they had to fight years for a raise to 12 and then 15 cents.
Still, submarine mining became more and more expensive. By now, new technologies and modernisation had paved the way to cheaper and easier mining of iron ore at other locations; international competition made it more lucrative for the mining companies to move on. So in 1949 # 2 mine stopped operating, and by 1966 all mines had been shut down, their tunnels flooded or walled up.
But the people on Bell Island, many of them families of former miners, did not want their heritage to be forgotten. So parts of # 2 mine were prepared for visitors and in 2000 a museum displaying many artifacts and fotographs opened ist doors. Tour guides take interested guests down into the mine and tell about the history and the hard lives of the miners of Bell Island.
The way down
There still are vast amounts of iron deep under the floor of the bay, but so far no mining company has shown real interest in starting a mining operation here again.
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the element-symbol Fe (because it’s Latin term is ‚ferrum‘) and the atomic number 26. In combination with nickel it probably is the main content of the Earth’s core.
Iron is rarely found in its pure form. Usually it occurs as iron ore. The word ‚ore‘ is used to lable a conglomerate of rock and metal (or metals); it is often found in ‚beds‘ layered between pure rock or other conglomerates. The iron in these ores can be found in mineral form as magnetite, hematite, goethite, limonite and siderite. The two principal forms are limonite and hematite; magnetite is the most magnetic of all; goethite was used as a color pigment even by the stone age artists that painted the caves of Lasceaux, France; siderite forms crystals with a translucent appearance.
At Bell Island, the iron ore mined contained hematite.
Hematite
Hematite
Hematite belongs to the group of iron-oxides. The color of its trigonal crystals ranges from black to red; it appears in various forms including iron rose and specularite, all of them possessing a rust-red streak. It is often found as banded iron.
On Mohs scale it reaches 5.5 to 6.5, thus being harder than pure iron, but much more brittle.
Because of his metallic luster in former times it was polished and used as a mirror. The name is of Greek origin, meaning ‚blood‘; it was derived from the red color oft he mineral and the ‚blood red‘ water it created when cut or sanded.
The genesis of iron ore deposits
Like all mineral ore deposits, iron ore ‚beds‘ can originate in volcanic or volcanoclastic activity, in hydrothermal formative processes or in sedimentation. Economic Geology, a relatively young branch of Earth Sciences, is concerned with the study of these very complex processes that are still not entirely unraveled.
By the end of the 1970s oceanographists discovered so-called ‚black smokers‘ in the deep see. These volcanic hydrothermic springs exude very hot water – reaching 400° C – that contains large amounts of minerals like iron or zinc, liquified as sulphuric salts. Reacting with the cold sea water – about 2° C -, the minerals precipitate and spread as sediments in the surrounding area. That is one way how – over millions of years – new ore deposits develop.
Gravity is the force behind another one: chemical or biogenic sediments. Small particles like sand, clays and dead animals or plants form a layer on the surface of the earth or the sea floor. The small spaces in between these particles contain water that dissolves minerals from the sediments. In the slow process of solidification that turns the sediments over long periods of time into stone, these waters are pressed into a different layer of the floor, thus forming mineral deposits.
In the rough area of what today is Conception Bay and its surroundings, during the Proterozoic Eon - the timespan between about 2500 - 540 million years ago - rock was formed partly by clastic sedimentation in marine and deltaic environment: Iron deposits accrued through decaying bacteria that had taken in the iron mineral soluted in the sea water.
Yet, the bulk of mafic rocks - containing high quantities of magnesium and iron - came about through volcanic and volcanoclastic activities producing magmatic rock.
To log this earthcache please answer these questions:
- How high was the percentage of hematite in the ore that had been mined on Bell Island?
- About how much heavier is iron ore to gang (dead rock)?
- Name the three words above the reception desk at # 2 Mine Museum
To answer these questions, it is not absolutely necessary to take a tour or visit the museum’s exhibition. However, it is highly recommended – these tours really are something unusual and special.
After sending us the answers, you do not have to wait for a reply. We will contact you if there is a problem with your answers.
While not a requirement any more, we would be happy if you would upload a picture with your log.
Sources:
wikipedia: diverse articles; "Planet Wissen" (a German TV-show); Der große Brockhaus: diverse articles; www.schieferatlas.de