Rocky Bay Quarry Explosions

On Thursday 7 February 1895, an experimental blasting charge went off while men were preparing it at the Rocky Bay quarries. John Irvine, the officer in charge of the Fremantle Harbour Works, was thrown over a ledge and died the next morning. Quarry foreman Timothy Yorke and Perth solicitor William Morton Purkiss suffered serious eye injuries. The inquest heard that an iron tool may have struck a spark against the rock as Irvine tried to clear a blockage in the drill hole. The jury found that his death was accidental and that no one could be held to blame.

 

Why the trial was held at Rocky Bay

The Rocky Bay quarries supplied limestone for the construction of Fremantle Harbour. A railway carried the stone from the quarries to Rous Head. All the stone used to build the North Mole came from Rocky Bay and some was also used in the South Mole. The North Mole reached its original design length in January 1895, a month before the explosion. Work to extend it continued later that year.

 

Irvine had worked on harbour projects at Hokitika and Westport in New Zealand and on the Clarence River in New South Wales. At Fremantle, Irvine oversaw work that included quarrying stone for the breakwaters. Nearly 350 men worked under him in various roles.

 

John Oldfield McCardell, a Perth explosives expert, arranged to meet Irvine at Rocky Bay to demonstrate a blasting compound called taipo. McCardell told the inquest that he had developed the compound and had received a patent about three weeks earlier. He said it could do the same work as ordinary blasting powder using between a third and half as much. Irvine agreed to try it because of the potential savings on quarry blasting.

 

McCardell told the inquest he had tested taipo in Victoria and at several sites in Western Australia, including Greenmount, Statham’s quarry on the Jarrahdale Company’s line, a railway deviation cutting and Cottesloe, where he said he had fired 20 shots. Rocky Bay was the first accident he reported having with it.

 

The charge jammed in the drill hole

Irvine chose a hole about 12 feet deep, seven feet back from the edge of a quarry ledge. Yorke said it would ordinarily have taken a keg and a half of blasting powder. The bottom of the hole had already been widened to form a chamber. McCardell thought the chamber might be too large for the trial, so sand was poured in to reduce the space.

 

McCardell said about seven pounds of taipo had gone into the hole when the last measure jammed about 2½ feet below the surface. Irvine tried to clear it with a copper-tipped tamping bar, then asked Yorke for a pointed iron tool known as a pricker. McCardell recalled Irvine saying he had got it through. He turned to measure out another portion and heard a sharp whizzing sound as the charge went off. He estimated that three or four minutes had passed since the fuse had been put into the hole.

 

McCardell was struck on the side of the head and thrown six or seven feet backwards. His hat landed about three yards further away and was flattened. He saw no flash and at first thought a stone from another blast along the quarry face had hit him. When he got up, he found Purkiss on his knees with his face down and helped him up. Other workers had already rushed to Irvine and Yorke. McCardell gathered the explosive scattered around the bag and handed it to a worker to return to the magazine.

 

What the men at the quarry saw

Patrick Kane, a quarry labourer who was filling in as the blasting crew’s assistant, had been bringing Irvine and Yorke what they needed. He said the hole had been drilled the day before and Yorke had told him to leave it unfired for the demonstration. Kane remembered Irvine using the pointed tool gently and said Yorke also used it before the explosion. Kane had turned to look at the bag of taipo when the blast threw him forward among the rocks and stunned him.

 

William Crossling, another quarry labourer, was 25 to 30 feet away. He recalled Irvine appearing to strike downwards with the pricker two or three times. Crossling said the rock was the hardest in the quarry and that he had struck sparks from it with a pick. Just before the blast, he heard a fizzing sound like cold water hitting hot iron and saw sand come out of the hole. The blast sent the pointed iron rod flying out of the hole. Irvine was thrown upwards, came down on the ledge and fell to the ground below. Yorke slid down the ledge on the other side.

 

Irvine’s death and the funeral

Dr Louis Wheeler received word of the explosion that afternoon and met railway trucks carrying three injured men at the North Fremantle crossing. Irvine had severe wounds to his neck and mouth, a lower jaw broken in two places and a fractured and dislocated spine. He had lost feeling and movement below the waist but remained conscious during treatment, which involved and operation on his jaw and dressing to the wound of his neck. Wheeler believed Irvine’s back had been broken when he fell onto the rocks. Irvine died from shock and the spinal injury at about 7 am on Friday 8 February.

 

Irvine was 51 and left his wife, Minnie, and seven children, the eldest aged 16. Work stopped at the Rocky Bay quarries on the day he died. Flags were flown at half-mast at Fremantle businesses and on ships in port.

 

The inquest and the suspected spark

Christian Henri André, an analytical chemist in charge of explosives at the harbour works, inspected the site the day after the blast. He found the iron pricker and saw that the top of the drill hole had been blown away. It had left a hollow about two feet deep, partly filled with sand and broken rock. He found pieces of taipo on a nearby ledge. André and the resident engineer, Mr McDonald, later destroyed the remaining stock on the Engineer-in-Chief’s orders, keeping small samples for the inquiry.

 

André thought the pricker might have struck a spark or forced a grain of explosive hard against the side of the hole. He favoured the spark explanation because rock taken from the hole was hard enough to produce one.

 

Coroner R. Fairbairn heard the case with jurors E. H. Fothergill, J. M. Ferguson, W. Llewellyn and Frank Cadd. In summing up, Fairbairn said Irvine appeared to have used the pricker more forcefully than some witnesses thought advisable and had been directing the work himself. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death and found that blame could not be attributed to anyone. The precise cause of ignition remained uncertain.

 

What happened to Yorke and Purkiss

Timothy Yorke suffered serious facial injuries. His left eye was removed and by 23 February, doctors had given up hope of restoring sight in his right eye. He was still in Fremantle’s Casualty Ward and recovering from the shock of the blast. The colonial government’s 1899-1900 appropriation lists a £75 annuity for Yorke for his injuries at the Rocky Bay quarries.

 

Purkiss injured both eyes and had shown little improvement by 23 February. Doctors feared that any sight he recovered would be permanently impaired. He went on to practise law in Perth with R. S. Haynes. In March 1897, the Chief Justice appointed him a commissioner to administer oaths and receive affidavits for use in the Supreme Court. He represented Perth in the Legislative Assembly from 1901 to 1904.