Digging Into The Brigus Tunnel
Brigus, founded in 1612, is not only among the oldest English settlements in Newfoundland, it is one of the most beautiful.
The community is full of handsome old homes and well-constructed buildings. It harkens to a different, wealthier time in rural Newfoundland.
For all of the striking architecture, perhaps there’s no greater image of its prosperous past than a hole in the ground — the Brigus Tunnel.
What is the Brigus Tunnel?
The Brigus Tunnel is a 30m pathway that travels through a solid wall of rock in Brigus. It is about 3m wide and 3m high.
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Abram Bartlett was born in Brigus in 1819 and became very successful in the seal hunt and Labrador fishery. He was part owner of the sealing vessel S.S. Panther and captained her for seventeen years averaging a harvest of 8,439 seals a year. He sailed the Panther to Turnavik, Labrador where he operated a fishing business under the name of A. Bartlett and Sons. He died in 1889.
He was grandfather of famed explorer Capt. Bob Bartlett.
It was built for Capt. Abram Bartlett in 1860. Bartlett wanted an easy way to access his boat, the S.S. Panther.
At the time, Brigus was a busy port with many boats crowding the harbour. In 1859, in order to get usable berthage Bartlett acquired land opposite Molly’s Island, adjacent to deep water. The site was good for docking but was surrounded by a 7m rocky ridge, meaning it was difficult to unload the ships. Cargo had to be carried over the ridge using cart and wheelbarrow. It was back-breaking work. The tunnel was the solution — it created a short, level path for unloading cargo.
Biulding the Tunnel
The tunnel was cut by John Hoskins — a Cornish miner who likely worked at the Tilt Cove Copper Mine.
Hoskins built the tunnel during the summer of 1860 while Bartlett was away at the Labrador fishery. He hand-drilled holes into the rock face and, as he was about 7 years ahead of Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite, packed them with gunpowder. The powder was detonated and the debris was cleared. By the time the Bartlett crew returned, the tunnel was ready and unloading the ship was a much easier affair.
They continued to make use of the tunnel until about 1910 when changes to the fishery rendered it unnecessary.
The Tunnel Legacy
There are signs of the historic fishery all along the Newfoundland coast but few managed to change the landscape as boldly as the Brigus Tunnel did, and few are likely to reach as far into the future.
When the tunnel was constructed the fishery was at the middle of Newfoundland life and communities with good access to cod flourished. As the cod fishery changed, then eventually ground to a halt, life in Newfoundland changed. In 1884, when the tunnel was in use, Brigus had a population of 2365. By 2016, the population was less than a third of that (723) and life in Brigus looked pretty different.
The Brigus Tunnel remains a reminder of the time when the Newfoundland fishery was strong enough to move mountains.
Or it will, if people can remember the real reason it was built.
The Tall-Tale Tunnel
St. George's Heritage Church, Brigus
No matter how interesting the real story of the Brigus Tunnel is, it’s done nothing to stop the spawning of tunnel mythology. Maybe it’s understandable. When the fishing industry declined it probably got hard to believe such a piece of infrastructure could ever have been worth the time and cost for a fishing business.
So, less than 50 years after it fell into disuse, stories of an alternate origin began creeping into print. In 1947 the Atlantic Guardian wrote “A walk to the "Tunnel" will bring to mind the doings of centuries ago as one remembers, according to tradition, the tunnel was used for the quick landing of contraband... “
Reaching even further back, Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism likes to remind us, that some people believe it might have connections to Pirate Peter Easton and that, somehow, the tunnel signals the location of his hidden treasure.
Peter Easton plied the waters off Newfoundland in the early 1600s and is thought to have died shortly after — long, long before anyone dreamed of the Brigus Tunnel.
It’s fun to imagine, I guess, but it’s completely impossible.
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Brigus, Decks Awash, March-April, 1986
Memories of Brigus, A.C. Hunter, Newfoundland Quarterly, 1972
Brigus, Encyclopedia of Newfoundland an Labrador.
Abram Bartlett, Encyclopedia of NL, Vol. 1.
Brigus by
John Northway Leamon, 2019, Flanker Press
