John Buddle was a local hero in North East England. When he died in 1843 his funeral procession was more than a mile long and thousands of pitmen lined the route to show their respect. He was a self made man who led his men from the front through floods, fires and explosions to get the coal Britain's industry depended upon. This book based on his unpublished diaries tells the story of his life in his own words, the drama, the tragedy, the lives of rich and poor in a way ...

For those on the surface that bright late spring morning, the twenty five pitmen who had escaped, others from the resting shift, and relatives of those still trapped underground the scene at the surface was terrifying. Within twenty minutes the water was sixty feet deep in the engine pit, the pit where the men were, and by the afternoon it was a hundred and twenty feet up the shaft...Buddle started pumping immediately, but the pumps at full capacity made no impression on...