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Deep Navigation Colliery was a coal mine in South Wales, that operated from 1872 until 1991. Located next to the co-developed village of Treharris in the borough of Merthyr Tydfil, on development it was the deepest coalmine in South Wales Coalfield by some . Producing the highest quality steam coal, it powered both the Cunard passenger steamers RMS ''Mauretania'' and RMS ''Lusitania'' in their successful attempts at the Blue Riband prize for the most rapid Atlantic Ocean passage.〔 The mine is also thought to have been one of several locally that provided coal to the RMS Titanic; tests carried out on coal found in the ship's wreck have shown that most of the coal on board originated in South Wales. Amongst one of the first collieries in South Wales to have shafts wound by electricity, it was the first colliery in South Wales to have pit head baths for its miners. Profitable due to the quality of its coal, but financially degraded by huge volumes of water ingress throughout its working life, it was closed by British Coal on Good Friday, 1991. Today the wider local site, which was also occupied by the nearby Taff Merthyr Colliery and the Trelewis Drift Mine,〔〕 has been redeveloped into the wildlife and leisure park, Parc Taff Bargoed. ==Harris Navigation: 1872-1893== In the early 1800s, a mineral lease was granted over of land, owned by three farms: Twyn-y Garreg; Pantanas; Cefn Forest. A group of businessmen, led by Frederick W. Harris, began negotiations for the rights to the mineral lease, which was eventually acquired in 1872. Nothing existed in the area at the time, except for the three farms and their outbuildings, plus the quiet River Taff Bargeod and a small forest on the slopes above the valley.〔 With a proposed name of Harris Navigation Steam Coal Company, development commenced with the construction a row of temporary small houses, built for the families and men who were to be employed to sink the pit. Named the Twyn-y-Garreg huts, they all had wooden frames covered by whitewashed hessian for walls. House No.1 was specially created for the Minnett family of two adults and ten children, and had four bedrooms. The remainder were classical 2up/2down room formation terraced-style houses, with a kitchen and parlour on the ground floor, and two bedrooms upstairs. Heating came from a coal fire placed under a stone or brick chimney stack, and the huts were completed with slate roofs. All materials for the huts construction came from locally obtained resources within the bounds of the mineral lease, including the development of a firestone quarry to the north of the colliery site. The new development was called Harris Town in Welsh, or Treharris.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Deep Navigation Colliery )〕 Construction of the main shafts began in October 1872, with sinking commencing in February 1873. Due to the required depth of the shafts to access the coal seams, the operation would prove to be both expensive and dangerous, and create the lifelong operational need to continually extract water due to high levels of ingress. The 167 men of the construction crew were not paid on time on a number of occasions, with final construction costs in May 1878 running to over £300,000, and seven men having lost their lives. The two shafts were built apart: North to a depth of ; South to .〔〔 This was deeper than any other colliery in the South Wales Coalfield at the time, to allow access the ''Nine Feet Seam.''〔Thomas (1979), pg 27.〕 Before coal could be extracted commercially, surface buildings were required to be completed. This included the installation of two John Fowler & Co. winding machines,〔 and the forest fully cleared, with wood stored for pit props. Finally the River Taff Bargeod was enclosed in a tunnel constructed of bricks made from the collieries quarry, enabling water ingress to the mine to be significantly reduced, and slag heaps to be placed on the resultant new land.〔 The first commercial coal was raised at North pit from 1879, and by 1881 both shafts were raising coal.〔 But by this point the colliery company was deep in debt. The only reason that funding had been forthcoming from the shareholders, commercial backers and banks was due to the potential high quality of the coal that could be extracted, and so it proved. The depth of the shafts and the quality of the steam coal extracted hence earned the colliery two nicknames in the South Wales coalfield: "Deep Navigation" and "Ocean Colliery". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Deep Navigation Colliery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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