Diving A Flooded Cornish Copper Mine

Описание: In this video we take a look at a small Cornish copper mine which has a few flooded sections that no one has seen in a long time.

The first shaft went vertically down for around 5m before changing direction, from vertical to around 45 degrees where it continued as an inclined shaft.
On the ceiling at the change of direction was an old roller made of wood with steel brackets still in situ, the purpose of this would have been to prevent wires or ropes from abrading on the roof as they were hauled. Following further down you could see timbers on the side to aid hauling buckets or kibbles to the surface, and on the opposite side, ladders still remain in quite good condition.

The inclined shaft went down around 15m, where it ended in a sump. Here sat a large boulder and some steel hoops and wood remains- possibly the remains of the kibble used to haul ore to the surface.
Around the corner in the direction behind the inclined shaft I had come from a tunnel continued, but it was very narrow and there didn't seem a lot of room for turning around.
I lost visibility very quickly here also, so it seemed like a good time to turn around and follow the guide line back to the surface.
As you would expect in these deeper sections there was a thick layer of soft sediment which is easily disturbed, and as soon as you enter an overhead environment like this the bubbles also disturb material from the ceiling, quickly reducing the visibility.

After a quick look down the tunnel on the surface which was the other side of the first pool (sadly didn't go- dead end) we relocated dive location to further into the mine where the second flooded hole was located.

We had high hopes for this one, from the surface it looked as though it got larger as it went down and had the potential for a really deep flooded cavern below.

Unfortunately it wasn't much more than just a flooded pit.
it was hard to tell if it had been backfilled or collapsed, or if they just didn't dig it very deep in the first place.
There was another possibility of another tunnel going off behind me, it was hard to tell as it had all gone orange at this point, i went that way but the water never cleared, so there was no obvious sign there was anyway onward unless it was really small and i did manage to miss in in the gloom.

Hopefully that explains any questions you have have had about the diving sections, i did attempt to try and talk a little through the regulator but I forgot that that's pretty much impossible.

Hope you enjoyed, obviously don't attempt to copy this, its very specialist diving with loads of things that can go wrong really badly super fast.