legends · 4 min read ·
Tapping
A colliery's rescue log and a surveyor's note record tapping through a seal, and a code the miners kept.
**Lowry Colliery — Rescue Control Log (1978 ledger, reproduced in a 2026 safety review)**
*Entries as recorded by the mine manager's clerk during the incident of 14–19 March.*
· · ·
**14 March, 22:10.** Explosion in the 7 Level, north district. Cage stopped. Gas alarm. 41 men underground. Rescue brigade called.
**14 March, 23:40.** Brigade teams down. Falls of roof at 3,100 yards. Passage blocked. Smoke.
**15 March, 04:00.** Twelve men recovered, alive, from the pit bottom. Twenty-two dead. Seven men unaccounted for in the north district.
**15 March, 08:30.** Seam sealed at 3,100 yards to isolate the fire. Seven men believed lost. Orders to withdraw.
· · ·
**15 March, 09:05.** From the sealed section, tapping heard on the pipe line. Slow. Regular. Three taps, a pause, three taps. A signal.
**15 March, 09:30.** Brigade answered with the hammer. Three taps. The tapping answered with three. Then a longer run, in a rhythm used for the shift whistle.
**15 March, 11:00.** Mine manager directed that no attempt be made to reopen the seal. Gas levels in the district make rescue impossible. The tapping to continue to be answered.
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**16 March, 06:00.** Tapping continues. Intervals longer. One man says it sounds like a man on the pipe with a spanner, tired.
**17 March, 14:00.** Tapping in the 7 Level, not at the pipe but along the roadway. Closer.
**18 March, 03:00.** Tapping at the seal. Five taps. A pause. Five taps.
**19 March, 08:00.** Tapping stopped. The district declared lost. Seven names recorded in the register. Memorial service arranged for the 25th.
· · ·
**Surveyor's note (A. Pryce, 2026, safety review of abandoned workings)**
I was engaged by the Mining Heritage Authority to survey the old levels at Lowry before the site is capped. The shaft was sealed in 1981. The surface buildings are gone. I went down by the drift in October, with two colleagues, wearing breathing apparatus.
We walked the 7 Level for 3 km to the north district. At 3,100 yards the roadway was blocked by a brick stopping, 4 m thick, with a pipe through it. The pipe is a 150 mm steel main, painted red, with a small valve.
I put my ear to the pipe.
· · ·
**Surveyor's note (continued)**
From the pipe came tapping. It was faint. Three taps, a pause, three taps. I put my hand on the steel and felt the vibration, coming through it from the far side. A small, tired, regular rhythm, like a man tapping with a spanner who has been doing it a very long time.
My colleague said it was water. The pipe has a trickle in it. A drip. I agreed, in the way one agrees with a colleague. But the drip does not make a pattern. It does not answer.
I tapped back. Three taps, with my torch. After a pause, from the other side of the stopping, three taps came back.
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**Surveyor's note (continued)**
We had no authority to open the stopping. We withdrew, as the rules say. But I went back down the following week on my own, which I should not have done. I took a hammer. I sat in the 7 Level, by the pipe, with my lamp turned low.
I tapped the shift whistle, as it was recorded in the log. Long, short, short. The stopping answered. Long, short, short. And then, from the far side, a series of taps that was not a signal I knew. A longer sequence, with a rhythm of its own. A knock, a knock, a knock.
I took it down. I know Morse. It came to a sentence.
· · ·
**Surveyor's note (final)**
*WE ARE ALL RIGHT. WE HAVE BEEN VERY WARM. THE AIR IS GOOD. COME WHEN YOU CAN. WE HAVE KEPT THE SHIFT.*
I sat for a long while with my hand on the pipe. The tapping did not stop. It went on, patiently, the same sentence, again and again, in the old miners' rhythm, as they had tapped it to the men who left them in 1978.
I have submitted my survey. I have recommended the site be capped. The Authority has accepted. The 7 Level will be backfilled with concrete in the spring.
Before I left I tapped one last message. I used the hammer. I put the code into the old pipe, slowly. I said what a man says to those he has left behind.
*THE SHIFT IS OVER. GO HOME.*
There was a long silence. Then from the other side of the stopping, a single reply, in a rhythm I knew. The whistle for the end of the shift. And after it, one more word, in a code I did not need to translate, because it was in my own father's hand, which he had used to tap on my bedroom wall: *COMING.*