Holes in the Ground: War and Ore

By D. M. Thomas

When Thomas Longois Lefoy is sent to Tangiers to investigate a German plot involving Moroccan phosphates, he uncovers a sinister Soviet Union involvement in the Asturias miners’ strike of 1934 and its unforeseen consequences for Andoni Arriola, a Basque metallurgist. As he delves deeper into the case, he finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving the Spanish Civil War, the injury and death of British intelligence agents, and the protection of Britain’s interests in the iron and copper mining industries. As he travels from Tangiers to Gibraltar, Huelva, and Bilbao, he witnesses the devastating effects of civil war and the destruction of open-cast mining. Along the way, he encounters Heinrich Rathenau, a German industrial chemist seeking refuge, and becomes embroiled in a dangerous game of espionage and political maneuvering that reveals the high stakes of international trade and the human cost of war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398474550

D. M. Thomas

D. M. Thomas is a poet and novelist. His novel The White Hotel (1981) is considered a modern classic, and has been translated into over thirty languages. He is also acclaimed as a translator of Pushkin and Anna Akhmatova.  

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About the Author

D M Thomas was born in West Wales. In his teens, he won an RAF Flying Scholarship but was not pursued as a career. Having obtained a degree in Geology and Chemistry at London University, and as a petroleum geologist, he embarked on overseas assignments in Southeast Asia, Libya and Tunisia. He went on to establish a successful natural resources company which was subsequently sold to a competitor. He continues to act as advisor to companies in the same field.

Holes in the Ground: War and Ore was started one winter evening in a farmhouse in south-west France. He and his wife spend their time between East Sussex and France.

Dedication

Thanks to all those, especially my wife, who encouraged and inspired me in the writing of this book.

Copyright Information ©

D M Thomas 2023

The right of D M Thomas to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN9781398474529 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398474536 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398474550 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781398474543 (Audiobook)

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First Published 2023

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Acknowledgement

Sincere appreciation to those who created events which supplied the facts to create a book of fiction. Facts make up the skeleton, fiction is the physiology. Anatomy is the study of the characters. I salute past historic spy authors from whom I take inspiration.

Summary

1936: Halfway house between Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship of Germany, and the start of the Second World War. It was the year of the Berlin Olympics where the black-American Jesse Owens won four gold medals in blatant disregard to Nazi ideology of Aryan racial supremacy. The year 1936 was the start of the sanguinary Spanish Civil War—turned into a proxy conflict between political ideologies. It was the year of public display of western power appeasement when Hitler marched his troops into Rhineland, a demilitarised zone that bordered France, Belgium and Germany. It was the year of the four-year economic plan which determined German self-sufficiency: ready for war.

Thomas Longois Lefoy is sent to Tangiers to learn of the German plan to import Moroccan phosphate—an important strategic ingredient in the manufacture of explosives. He learns of the death and serious injury of British intelligence agents in Casablanca, and their possible involvement in the phosphate arrangement. HM Government is concerned over the effect of the nascent Spanish Civil War on British interests in the iron and copper mining industries. The tale relates the involvement of Soviet Union in Asturias miners’ strike of 1934, and its unforeseen consequence for Andoni Arriola, a Basque metallurgist.

Heinrich Rathenau, an industrial chemist, fleeing Germany finds sanctuary, and Thomas Lefoy who travels from Tangiers to Gibraltar, Huelva and Bilbao, and sees first-hand the devastation of war and open-cast mining.

Chapter 1

Andoni Arriola: 1900–1925

Andoni Esteban Arriola grabbed his father’s arm and pulled him into the recess under the curved staircase. He wanted a favour. He wanted his father to ask him a question during that evening’s birthday dinner party. He tugged at his father’s arm. Please! Young Andoni jumped up and down. Please! The question was: tell us about the Cantalabrian Mountains. The question was to be put, ideally, when they all sat down at the dining table, and before eating. Timing was important. He knew his family; once food was on the plate, serious conversation or even listening was impossible. There’d be talking, of course, all around the table, but conversation, in essence, was among themselves. The speaker and his or her intended conversationalist was listened-in-on and replies or oblique comments to a particular fact or opinion were made in a general way. A free for all of opinion and comment.

Political discussion and Basque politics in particular, was not allowed; a family get-together rule. Too many spoilt occasions. There was paternal grandfather Esteban in one corner, and the pugnacious, stubborn, maternal uncle Gurria in the other.

Ferrando Arriola, a kind and considerate man and father, of course agreed. Grandfather Esteban had just finished recounting an anecdote about a fishing incident on the bank of the Ebro River. This would invariably have happened decades ago, but recounted with the clarity of yesterday. There was a sudden pause in the cacophony. It was the maid entering the dining room with two bottles of wine. Arms slightly away from the body, hands firmly clasping each bottle by the neck—as if they were chickens. Someone clapped. Here was his chance. I say Andoni tell us about the Cantalabrian Mountains. Ferrando picked up a vegetable tureen and passed it to his sister, aunt Xaviera, next to him. He’s interested in geology, he whispered theatrically out loud. That’s all he’s interested in these days! Isn’t that right young Andoni.

Twelve-year-old Andoni ignored the compliment. He pushed back his chai and stood up. All eyes were on him. He was dressed in his Sunday best; a dark blue suit, white shirt and a matching dark-blue bow tie with his oiled raven-coloured hair parted down the middle. His mother saw an angel.

Hands clasped in front of him, like an altar boy, he started, The Cantabrian Mountains run from west to east, for 300 kilometres. It starts in Portugal and ends at our Basque border. The continuation of the mountain chain is now called the Basque Mountains!

Ha! well said! came from a male voice up the table to his right, possibly a cousin; accompanied by clapping a hand—as if re-sending and reinforcing the remark in Morse code—in appreciation on the table. Grandfather Gurrio did the same. The others just smiled, some indulgently so.

This mountain chain separates the lowlands by the sea and the Central Spanish Plateau.

La Mancha and Don Quixote, interrupted a male voice to his right. Actually no! thought Andoni, La Mancha is south of Madrid. But he kept that to himself. He was eager to press on with his pre-dinner lecture.

He was confident now, You may well ask why the mountains are jagged, like the teeth of a crocodile. Well, the answer is simple. It is to do, he slowed down here, must get the terminology right with the tectonics and structural architecture of the mountains.

Right, got that right. Continue. He placed one hand on top of another, and turned to his left, and then to his right, like a stage performer, a magician; the beginning of a slight of hand.

Its movement is of thick sections of rocks being pushed over each other. He pushed on hand over the other. See! And with the pushing you have severe tilting, even strata landing up vertical. He demonstrated. Then over time, and with erosion, the rocks that erode quickly are, err…eroded, and the harder rocks are eroded more slowly. He had both hands vertically up, See, compression has forced this situation, and if one hand erodes faster than the other, there are faults and fractures, erosion attacks the fractured weakness. He opened up his hand splaying his fingers. See. He showed his splayed hand to the left of the table and then to the right. That is why we have crocodile teeth rocks.

The briefest of silence, then enthusiastic clapping from all around the table. Well done, my boy, I never knew that! cried the guest of honour, his paternal grandfather. I like that about the Basque Mountain, said a very pleased maternal grandmother Amaia. Well said, said the widower uncle from Lugrono.

Young Andoni sat down. He gasped! Just remembered something important, and hurriedly pushed back his chair got to his feet again, Sorry I forgot to say most of the mountain chain is Palaeozoic in age, and sat down. Sister Nahiva, bent over the table to look at him past cousin Gontzal—who was in the process of inserting half a tomato into his mouth—and theatrically screwed up her face, What does that actually mean? She knew the answer. She was older than him, but it was all for fun.

A precocious boy, but neither the pushy nor obnoxious kind. The dinner table presentation was not to be misconstrued as it was by certain members of the extended family. No. Just someone enthusiastic with what he had learnt and wanted passionately so to pass it on to others.

The Palaeozoic question was unanswered. Everyone had moved on. There was a celebratory dinner to eat and enjoy.

Andoni Esteban Arriola was born at home, Number 14, Santa Isabel Kalea. A corner house overlooking the Parque de Molinuevo in Vitoria Gasteiz, capital of the Basque country. It was 12 June 1900. His father was a wine and cider merchant, with a shop and warehouse near the cathedral. His grandfather used to live and own a vineyard on the north bank of the Ebro River near the town of Bastida. The estate nestled on the southern slopes of the Sierra Toloño, sheltered from the Atlantic weather, and under the protection—his grandfather had said so of—San Cristobal which rose majestically behind them. The pole star always sat over San Cristobal. Double protection he had said: rock and celestial.

The Basque wine business crashed in mid 1880s, all due to an unfortunate catastrophic event, the phylloxera louse, a microscopic size sap-sucking insect which fed on the leaves and roots of grapevines. The French were the first and hardest hit by the louse, which created an immediate and insatiable demand for Rioja wine. Esteban Arriola would transport his casks of wine to Vitoria and onward to Bilbao for sea export. Inevitably, the louse reached the Alavesa valley in 1890s and his business took a sharp downward turn. The family rented out the house, and the once prized vineyard was re-tilled and turned into one big orchard, so remembered his grandfather with great regret and distain.

The Arriola family moved to Vitoria-Gasteiz, and with his son as a partner, Esteban opened a wine and cider import-export business; more import than export. In time the situation improved; the French had introduced vine cuttings from California, and slowly but surely the Rioja wine business got back on its feet. It was a good business. It helped educate young Andoni and send him to university.

Geology was his subject. The study of rocks. Questions like: why is this rock grey in colour, and this one is black? Why is this friable and this one hard? Why is this rock heavier than that one? Questions, questions, questions…

Over the years he changed his mind. By the time it was indeed time for him to go to university, he had decided on metals. The extraction of metals from ores. Geology was of course interesting, had he not climbed all eight hundred metres of San Cristobal! And chipped bits off rock outcrops and examined the sample with a hand lens! But the physio-chemical process involved in the making and the formation of a mineral was more exciting. Like: how are stars made? How is a snowflake made? The geometry, the shape of minerals just like a simple snowflake is a wonder. Isn’t it? Don’t you think?

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The old mediaeval city of Oviedo, in the province of Asturias lies on the northern slopes of the Cantabrians. It is downhill from here to the lowland coastal port of Gijon, twenty kilometres away.

The University of Oviedo was founded in the sixteenth century. In the middle of its cloistered quadrangle is a statue of its founder, Fernando de Valdés Salas (1483–1568). The figure was sitting, head bowed, a religious scroll in his right hand, and his left foot resting on a cushion. He was no doubt thinking over what he had just read. Philosophical thoughts, or perhaps as the inquisitor general, his thoughts were on dastardly ways of torture before the unbelievers, the pseudo-Jews, were burnt alive. He was named bishop of Oviedo in 1532, León in 1539, Sigüenza also in 1539, then a promotion to Archbishop of Seville in 1546. He rose higher; President of the Royal Council of Castille and, by papal appointment, inquisition general in 1547. He even had time to compile a long list of prohibited books, which he called his Index Libororum Prohibitorum, which included off-message Catholic priests, and the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, Lutherans; these followers of the loathsome Martin Luther were particularly unwelcome creatures, as were Jews and Muslims.

The university had a geology and mineralogy department. Andoni Esteban Arriola arrived in Oviedo ready for the autumn term 1920. He did well, because he enjoyed his days in lecture halls, field trips and peering down petrographic microscope measuring optical angles or trying to recognise a particular mineral. The department had ore samples for all over the world. Identify this Arriola, or tell me Arriola, how do you think this was formed?

The mineralogy courses covered subjects, such as chemical composition, physical properties, crystal structures and occurrence and distribution in nature. The Cantelabrian Mountain chain was rich in coal and iron ore. During the summer he enjoyed university-sponsored employment with an iron and steel making company in La Felguera just across the river from Langreo, just twelve kilometres by road from Oviedo. This was a more practical exercise in appreciating the work and process involved in the making of iron and steel.

Coal and iron ore were brought in by road and by rail. Coal was for the furnaces, and the iron ore was converted to railway rails and steel sheets. A private railway built in 1850s took the products down to the port of Gijon for export. He spent one summer mostly underground at a coal mine in La Camocha. There he learnt the art of back-filling, and how to mine coal strata of different thickness, followed by the processes of underground water control and air ventilation systems; all crucial to underground mining. But his current interest was steel making.

One afternoon in January 1923, he skipped excitedly into the sitting room, his sister Nahiva had her back to him, she was reading a book by the window. He stood in front of her, extended his arms and opened both palms. Here is a lump of iron ore; exhibit ‘A’, he said, imitating one of his metallurgy lecturers, and here, exhibit ‘B’ is a steel screw. You have an hour to turn ‘A’ into ‘B’! She of course ignored him, and later after he had left the room, she shook her head and smiled.

Anthony Esterban Arriola graduated in the summer of 1925 with a degree in mineralogy with a major in metallurgy.

Chapter 2

Andoni Arriola: July 1925, Bilbao

Iron ore occurs throughout the whole length of the Cantabrian Mountains; through the Basque provinces, Santander and Asturias to northern Portugal. Other large deposits are known in eastern and southern Spain, in the provinces of Murcia, Almeria, Seville and Malaga. It is however, owing to the difficulties of transport, those which are economically worked are near the coast.

The most important deposits, worked far more extensively than any others, are those which are situated in the district of Vizcaya in the Basque region, and the ones lying near and overlooking Bilbao from which point the output is shipped, are collectively known as the Bilbao iron deposits. These deposits are situated on the northern slope of the Cantabrian Mountains. The ground is for the most part hilly or mountainous, with very little flat land even along the sea shore. The ore lies chiefly at altitudes of between two hundred and three hundred metres. Standing on top of the ore mountain, one could simply roll downhill into Bilbao to the east, and the sea to the north.

It was from these iron ores that the metal for the celebrated Toledo blades was obtained, and in fact in the time of Shakespeare these deposits were so renowned that the term Bilbo was employed to designate various objects of iron and steel, as sword blades, fetters, etc., and so we find Falstaff—in the Marry Wives of Windsor—speaking of himself as compassed like a good Bilbo in the circumference of a peck, and Hamlet described to Horatio a situation as …me thought I lay worse than the mutines in the bilboes.

These Bilbao iron deposits were first mined on a very large scale when the demand for ores of this particular low-impurity makeup was created by the introduction of the Bessemer process.

In the 1850s, Henry Bessemer invented a simple yet ingenious way to convert molten iron into steel. In essence, Bessemer received a patent on the process of blasting air to the molten wrought iron to remove impurities to make steel. This new equipment comprised a tilting egg-shaped vessel serving as the ‘converter’ for the process. With the advent of the new age of industrial and economic expansion, the use of steel was paramount for the manufacture of railway rails, girders, steel sheets, especially for shipbuilding, and importantly, armaments for national defence and aggression.

Both Great Britain and Germany needed steel; Britain for its expanding international commercial interests, and Germany for its military expansionist policies. The Franco-Prussian War had started in 1871. Both countries needed a plentiful and continuous supply of high-grade iron-ore feedstock.

In 1873, an Anglo-German consortium made up of Dowlais Iron Co., Consett Iron Co. (together they would ultimately become the giant GKN—Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, industrial combine in 1902) and Krupp Stahlwerke of Essen, each bought a majority interest in the Orconera Iron Ore Company of Bilbao, leaving the original Spanish owner with a quarter share. It was so-named after a small goat-keeping village perched on top of an iron ore mountain. The Orconera went on to purchase additional iron-ore mines near Santander to the west.

The Bilbao iron-ore, iron oxide or haematite, was practically free from sulphur and phosphorous impurities, and yielded from 50 to 65 per cent metal, absolutely ideal for steel making and ideal for the Bessemer process.

The quality of the Bilbao ore and the cheapness of its extraction (as compared with the high cost of extracting Welsh iron-ore) was such that it made more economic sense to mine and ship Bilbao haematite to the docks of Cardiff, Barry and Port Talbot. The local iron-ore mines like Llanharry and Mwyndy near Llantrisant, Garth mine at Pentyrch near Cardiff, let alone imports from Lancashire and Westmorland, were neither able to cope with the volume nor ore quality required for the new Bessemer steel works at Dowlais and other South Wales steel making centres. And this was in the 1880s.

Of the six million tons per year of iron ore imported to feed the South Wales furnaces at the turn of the twentieth century, four-fifths came from the Basque country.

The Orconera Iron Ore Company was an important cog in British industry and integral to government home and foreign decision-making. The discontinuance of British iron-ore imports would practically close some two-thirds of the ironworks in Scotland, all the ironworks in South Wales, nearly half of the ironworks in Cleveland, and nearly one-half of the blast furnaces in West Cumberland and North-West Lancashire.

The withdrawal of Bilbao iron ore, especially in the 1890s, would have seriously impact on steel production for the building of ships, especially in the naval arms race between Germany and Great Britain; no rails, axles, wheels for locomotives and wagons for the building of South American railway networks; let alone service the metalwork needs of India, South Africa and Australia.

Professor Miguel Azzoa, head of the Department of Mineralogy at the University of Oviedo suggested he write to the Orconera Iron Ore Company in Bilbao.

I’d be more than pleased to give you a reference.

Andoni Arriola did indeed write, and one day in late July 1925, he travelled to the busy industrial seaport of Bilbao for an interview. His father drove him there; sister Nahiva came for the ride. She had not been to Bilbao, but had spent a family-weekend vacation in Santander a few years ago.

The address he had been given was in the northern Bilbao suburb of Lutxana, on the River Nervión, a few kilometres from the centre of Bilbao. This was where Orconera had its shipping operations. The iron ore travelled from an altitude of over a thousand feet, down the mountain in overhead buckets on an aerial tramway—like a ski lift—for export in awaiting bulk carriers berthed on the river.

The interview took up an hour or so. It was in a large dark wood-panelled room on the first floor. There was a large portrait of a serious Victorian gentleman in a contemplative pose, over the wide red brick fireplace, a room for serious business. It was the board room of the Orconera Iron Ore Company. The long and wide mahogany table, with its carved legs and embossed rim, also suggested this role. He sat facing three of them.

The one on the left, sported a mop of thick and disorganised white hair. From his look, Andoni thought he might be in his mid-forties, the white hair had to be down to genes, or perhaps a melanin reaction to a terrible fright. He wore an open-necked light blue shirt with large green onyx cufflinks. His white linen jacket was lying as if discarded on the end of the table. A huge, powerful hand beckoned him to the straight-backed chair facing the table. The other two people shared a cardboard-backed file lying between them, and each had notebooks which they would scribble comments or notes as the interview continued; usually in unison. Both, in contrast to the white-haired man, wore grey suits—London office attire—and striped ties. This was Spain in July, but attitude of mind sometimes takes precedence over practicality. The whirling ceiling fan was working overtime to create the illusion of London EC4. Both were in the coming up to middle-age. They wore spectacles; one wore the heavy black type as preferred by journalists and intellectuals, and the other, in contrast, wore the rimless kind, which along with a thin serious face and narrow mouth portrayed a sinister visage.

Mr Howells was however according to his wife, of a kind and sympathetic nature, and a good husband and father. It was the work environment expression on display here, and more so when dealing with departmental over-spend and frivolous expenditure. He was quite ferocious in dealing with people who didn’t understand the concept of budget variance. Forensic analysis of actual versus budgeted expenditure was his forte. Mr Oswyn Howells also had a voice on the fund’s allocation committee known as ‘Personnel Development’. To insiders, it was simply called ‘All Souls’, for the simple fact that a past committee chairman had been a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. This was in another organisation; not to be confused with GKN.

The white-haired Mr JA Jameson did most of the talking; the questioning, the commenting and replied to Andoni’s many questions. He would stand up, walk around, look through the window onto the car park below or up to the Orconera iron mountain, then sit down again. A restless individual. A man who would lose his temper quite quickly, assessed Andoni. The black spectacled man had a persistent dry cough, which Jameson found irritating, and would frown in disapproval whenever a bout of coughing would start.

Jimmy Jameson spoke good Spanish, he had been His Majesty’s Consul in Barcelona once upon a time, and was now something, he had said so, in ‘Personnel’.

Right, I think that’s it, what’s the time? and to answer his question, he looked at his wristwatch.

I want to show you the scale of operations here. First, we wander round the shipping staithes outside, I’ll give you a bit of history, then we’ll drive up to the mine. Expect it will take a couple of hours. He glanced at his colleagues; they nodded their heads in agreement. He clapped both palms on the table, glanced at his watch; interview terminated at 15:34 hrs, and rose. The other two followed suit gathered up their notebooks and the rimless man picked up Arriola’s file. Oswyn Howells said goodbye and good luck in Spanish, and the coughing man held his handkerchief to his mouth and mumbled something, and then they were gone.

Jimmy Jameson was not a big man, but he would boast that he was taller than Napoleon. He was broad of shoulders and had hands like shovels. As a young subaltern, he had served with Winston Churchill in South Africa. Now, twenty-five years on, here he was, in Bilbao, dressed in a crumpled white-linen suit starting the exercise of forging a new allegiance for Andoni Arriola.

He threw on his jacket, grabbed his Panama hat from the window sill and carefully put it on, and adjusted it to fit squarely on his head. Have you got someone with you?

Yes sir, my father drove me here, he’s outside with my sister.

As they walked towards the door, Jameson turned, Ah! Nahiva, isn’t it. How old is she now?

An immediate cold spidery feeling went through his body. The question of siblings had not come up in the interview. Never mentioned. How did Jameson know about Nahiva? He didn’t answer the question—just followed the white-haired man with the onyx cufflinks out of the room.

Jimmy Jameson was all courtesy and politeness when he shook hands with Senor Arriola and then with Nahiva. Long lost friends just met. He overwhelmed them with bonhomie; from the exaggerated flourish of raising his hat in greeting as he walked towards them, followed by a long firm handshake, ending with the praise of Basque scenery. He told Nahiva who hadn’t been to Bilbao before, to marvel at the Puente de Vizcaya, or the Puente Colgante as it was known to locals—the hanging bridge, built in 1893, and by the same French architect who later designed and built the one in Newport, South Wales; heart of GKN country.

Andoni had not been told whether he had a job or not. Nothing had been said. Questions on his syllabus, his metallurgical interest, hobbies, and suchlike normal interview-type questions. A few political questions and comments were thrown in between a short general discussion on the Spanish mineral industry overall.

Andoni was later to review this in his head, and realised the cleverness of the questioning. Was he Basque or Madrid sympathetic? Yes, that what it was all about. Allegiance. He assumed he had passed the test—because of the orientation exercise he was now about to embark. All a bit of a whirlwind afternoon. Jameson had told the Arriolas’ to be back in two hours at this very spot—he pointed to the gravel at their feet—in the Orconera car park. Senor Arriola and Senorita Arriola nodded their heads in unison. Understood. Nahiva immediately took a liking to him. She was attracted to decisive men, she saw herself in him, and stood gazing at her brother and Mr Jameson, the Englishman as they walked away.

They were down by the river shore, at the Orconera wharf, opposite the bulk carrier SS Bethany, ready and fully loaded for Roath Docks, Cardiff.

"I just want to impress upon you the investment we’ve put into our operations here. As I said earlier, we have a strong link with South Wales, you could say the raison d’etre of Orconera is South Wales and our steel operations there. Facilities here in the 1870s were primitive and discouraging to shipowners. Only vessels drawing less than thirteen feet of water could reach Bilbao from the sea. Bilbao, as you know, is eight kilometres from the estuary," and he pointed north-westwards.

The estuary faces westwards into the Bay of Biscay and the prevailing westerly winds made the approaches to the river very hazardous. There’s also a dangerous sandbank at the entrance to the river. Can you imagine the problems of sail ships making their way to here? The advent of steam ships helped immeasurably, as you can imagine Arriola.

Arriola nodded his head. Yes, he agreed.

We had at one time, so I’m told, over two hundred ships awaiting ore, two hundred! All laid up, if that’s the correct nautical description, from Barakaldo just over there, to opposite Bilbao main railway station, and he waved his arm behind them. That’s eight kilometres upstream!

Why so many ships? asked an astonished Arriola.

All to do with draught. After our location-specific dredging operations, the river could still only handle twenty feet of draught. Ore tonnage per ship is less than a thousand tons.

‘See the aerial tramway behind you?’

Arriola turned his head. Come, let’s walk up to where the conveyor ends.

They stood at the end, the river end, of the aerial tramway. The drams of iron ore as they reached the end point, were manually tipped onto a pile on the ground below it—this is still about ten metres above river level. The ore was then steam shovelled onto a wide conveyor belt which travelled to the wharf supported by cast iron pillars. Once a ship had berthed below the outlet funnel, the conveyor belt would start and the ship would fill with crushed Orconera iron ore.

They walked along the busy wharf; a blanket of brown-black dust covered the whole work area. The noise was deafening, from tons of cascading rock ore into a steam ship’s hold, high-pitched shrieking noise from the wheels of the conveyor belt, shouts from workmen and sailors. Tug boats out on the river blew their shrill whistle to be answered by others; communicating in steam whistle code. As they walked slowly through this hullabaloo, Arriola could make out conversations and shouts in Basque, Spanish, English and a language which he would later discover to be Welsh.

What about ballast?

The ships leave South Wales with coal and coke for the ports of western France and then come here.

Hmm, a simple operation.

"No! Nothing is simple Arriola. There’s always a hitch; always something that turns up least expected. Think of coordinating the weekly tonnage expected in Cardiff, Newport, Barry or Port Talbot, we have to keep the steel mills working. No downtime. The distance from here to there is roughly eight hundred miles, and across the Bay of Biscay no less. Try doing that in winter! Weather delays, the occasional ship wreak! Oh, yes, it’s happened. He looked sharply at Arriola and continued, then delays at the mine; for whatever reason. We sometimes have to send ore from our other mine at Santander. Think of the communication, the change of instructions! And on and on." Jameson had stopped walking and landed up waving his large hands around in emphasis.

They walked back towards the car park.

Have a guess who is in ultimate control of this Orconera shipping operation?

Arriola shook his head. He had obviously no idea.

One man. The formidable Mister Noah Evans, the Dowlais shipping manager. Talk about long distance management!

Andoni Arriola had no idea where Dowlais was. He’d heard of it, and thought it was in the Cardiff area.

Does all the ore go to South Wales? I thought the German company Krupp was involved. Don’t they take their share?

Yes, they do, but only in their Orconera equity percentage.

Right, done. That’s it. Now for the mine.

Jameson Drove the dark green painted Vauxhall 25D tourer with gusto. He drove through the white-washed walls of Ugate. The villagers were used to traffic, but chickens and goats were not inclined to remember to keep off the road when incoming traffic was heading their way. Jameson braked, then sped on, only to brake again. This was a manifestation of life itself to Jimmy Jameson. Or at least how he spent it. The ups and downs of living his life were on display to his unfortunate passenger in the heavy, on-off, use of throttle and brake.

Arriola moved to hold on to the sill of the door and the wooden passenger grip in front of him. Jameson smiled.