 |
 |
The whip shafts in Wheal Friendship were used to raise ore from the deep bottoms up to the old inclined plane, up until its replacement in the late 1820's by the new inclined plane. They also may have served as a sump so there may have been a limited amount of pumping, up a level or two to where water could run back to an engine shaft. They were presumably worked by a surface water powered drawing machine, so whether they could be truely described as a whip (ie reciprocal action for drawing) is debatable. The use of a drawing machine worked by the action of pump rods at Friendship was considerably later. Alasdair Neill On Sat, 3 May 2008 19:01:52 +0000, Robert Waterhouse <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >Dear List, > >What does the term 'whip' mean in an underground context? The C19 Wheal Friendship section drawing shows two shafts called East & West Whip Shafts, both of which are named as 'chain roads' higher up in the mine; they both converge on the foot of Courtice's Shaft. I suspect the chain roads carried chains on pulleys which transferred back-and-forth motion to deep pumping machinery - do whips have something to do with this? > >Robert Waterhouse >_________________________________________________________________