GERMAN TESTIMONY TO ENGLISH MINING SKILL.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1955, 31 May 1880, Page 3

GERMAN TESTIMONY TO ENGLISH MINING SKILL.

In * c Gluckauf ” of the 25th ult., wo road : —“ The Hibernia and Shamrock Collieries will be among the few to pay a satisfactory dividend on last year’s work. They are certainly the best-planned works in the Ruhr coalfield, and we cannot help recalling, in connection with them, the memory of the man who, called into Germany some twenty-five years ago, sunk the pits of both collieries in an extraordinary short space of time, introduced tubbing upon the Continent, and showed how, with shafts measuring no more in the clear than from 13ft. to 15ft., it was possible to win from 1000 to 1250 tons of coal a day. There is no denying to the English engineer, William Coulson, the merit of having largely promoted the development of German coalmining. An ‘ engineer,’in the German sense of the word, he certainly was not, being notonly self taught, but only taught at all in the matters he thought essential to his success, and his only school was practice. Such a thing as a drawing pencil he probably never possessed in his life. With a bit of chalk in his pocket, ho would score down on the first bit of board that came handy what ho wished his workpeople to do. Ho could not read, and not till late in life was he able to do bo much as to write his own name legibly enough for a signature. More than once his want of theoretical knowledge cost him dear. He lived to bo an old man, and died in England, after opening twenty-three shafts in that country and five in Germany.”