Newport Docks Disaster hero's example still shines 100 years on

Deep underground and in the dark a 17-year-old hero was presented with an agonising dilemma. Mike Buckingham tells the story of Tom Toya Lewis and the Newport Docks Disaster.

TODAY we would call him a yobbo or a lout, the skinny little truant and thief who overnight became a national hero and won the admiration of a king.

Exactly 100 years ago, on July 2, 1909 just as scores of men working on the new Alexandra Dock lock waited for the steam whistle that would send them home for their suppers a vision of hell broke upon the city.

With a deep rumble and reports like gunfire as 13-inch timbers snapped like matchsticks the sides of the 45-foot deep trench caved in immediately crushing a score at least of the workers and trapping many more.

It was into this demonic scene of screams, destruction and darkness that Tom 'Toya' Lewis plunged, slipping like a lithe little animal through the matrix of twisted and splintered beams and soil down into the bowels of the trench from whence men cried out piteously for help.

Lewis was a gambler on the horses and cards. Now he was taking he greatest gamble of his young life.

'Mind how you go, young Tom' an ambulanceman said as Tom, already white and shaking despite his saying that he 'wasn't afeared' squeezed himself into an opening and slipped down into the chasm.

By the light of naptha flares 30 feet above Tom could see a timber which appeared to run unobstructed down to the trench's bottom and slid down it, lighting a candle when at length he reached the bottom.

He touched something wet yet with a stickiness unlike the seawater that before long would flood the trench and saw that it was blood. Seconds later came the voice of the man who had shed it.

'They have come at last' Fred Bardill, a huge baulk of timber across his legs and hands and another forcing his head onto his chest groaned.

"Give me something to drink'.

Tom shouted out and a brandy bottle was lowered the contents of which Bardill sucked at greedily.

'Got any tools son?'

Tom called up again and a hammer, chisel and a saw came down and soon he was working away by the feeble light of a candle, the eerie shadows making a grim tableau orchestrated by the groans and cracks of tortured timber.

'I only started the job today. How's that for luck?' Bardill grimaced as his hand was set free, telling Tom in rambling fashion how he had been climbing out of the trench but had been pitched back into it by the collapse of the ladder.

Tom, begrimed and blinded by his own sweat said nothing, a blind almost superhuman energy directing his blows at the tough timber. And then he stopped, hammer in mid-air.

'Listen'.

Tom cocked his fair head. There came another deep groan as a timber nearby began to give under the immense pressure.

'Tom! Little Tom! Get out quickly' the cry came from above and in an agonising moment the eyes of boy and the still-trapped man met.

The groans and creaks were at a crescendo as the shouts came again.

'Don't leave me!' Bardill pleaded and Tom, frightened and exhausted, began to cry.

He dropped the tools and scrambled towards the flares, the sounds of the cracking timber drowning out Bordill's cries.

He had gambled with his own life and had very nearly lost.

Now the life of the hapless Bardill was forfeit.

Back on the surface Tom, shaken by his underground encounter was wrapped in a blanket and taken to his home at Wallis Street where he collapsed into bed, later to be woken and told that a special messenger wanted to see him.

The message was that Bardill had been rescued - the last man to have been - and was recovering from his injuries.

Another message reaching him some days later thrilled he boy to the core.

KIng Edward VII had summoned him to Buckingham Palace for the award of the Albert Medal for conspicuous bravery.

As he pinned the medal onto Tom's breast the King said 'Well done, Tom Lewis. I shall expect to hear more about you.'

Tom Lewis's story had all the elements of a thriller - death and primeval darkness, hope, abandonment and fear - and yet even that could not overshadow the wider events of July 2, 1909.

Heavy rain in the preceding weeks has saturated the soil around the diverted bed of the Ebbw River to the point that the pressure collapsed the piles holding the trench in place.

The work of constructing the lock had been undertaken by civil engineers Messrs Easton Gibb and Son on behalf of the Alexandra Docks and Railway Company, the idea being to attract the class of huge new cargo ships designed to pass through the newly-opened Panama Canal.

The subsequent enquiry was evidently unwilling to let blame for the incident reach anywhere near the top of the chain of command and rounded instead upon a certain Ratcliffe, a site supervisor.

Ratcliffe whose duty was to physically inspect the timbers had been hurt in the collapse but bizarrely, after being treated for broken ribs and other relatively minor injuries had been sent home where he had chirpily sat up in bed and given interviews to reports.

Then, and within hours and for medical reasons that are unclear he died, his name aded to the list of 38 others who had perished.

Although there were the conventional expressions of regret at his death there was no disguising the relief felt in certain quarters at the timely expiry of a man upon much of the blame for the loss of life could plausibly be heaped.

The monarch who had pinned the medal to Tom's chest came to Newport and saw for himself the obscene gash in the ground where once the ordered lock workings had been and the rail trucks and cranes that had slid into the subsidence.

The genuine grief of a monarch for his people may also have masked another piece of cynicism.

Documents which passed between civil servants suggested that a 17-year-old boy who had been written off as tearaway but who went on to display great bravery could be used as a good example for other erring youths - an early attempt at positive spin.

In fact the Argus delivery boy who only weeks before the disaster had been convicted for stealing lead was to make further appearances at Newport's magistrates' court before once more passing into the background of public affairs.

Today, those who died are remembered by an obelisk at St Woolos' cemetery.

The name of of Tom Toya Lewis, the faulted hero of the Newport docks disaster is remembered by surviving family members and in the name of a public house.

Some aspects of the tragic story will probably never emerge from the shadow under which they have been cast.

But the courage of a boy who took his own life in his hands and who took a terrible decision no 17-year-old should never have to make as a fellow human being lay trapped and in pain will always burn bright in the city's history.