A Maid of the Silver Sea (John Oxenham, 1910)

Category	Literature
Dates	Novel published 1910 (Hodder and Stoughton); reviewed in The Spectator 28 May 1910; set in the mine's working years, mid-1830s to 1845; filmed 1922.

John Oxenham's 1910 novel is set among the silver mines of Little Sark in the 1830s and 1840s: a Cornish mine captain, Stephen Gard, comes to Port Gorey to drive the failing Sark's Hope mine, meets the hostility of the Sark men and the silver fever of the farmer who lodges him, and fights the sea that is breaking into the galleries under the Gouliot cliffs.

A Victorian engraving of a narrow rocky ridge falling steeply to the sea on both sides, with a tiny figure walking its crest. — La Coupée, the ridge between Sark and Little Sark that the novel's characters cross to reach the mines, as engraved in 1857 Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The mining history in this record

William Arthur Dunkerley, who wrote as John Oxenham, published A Maid of the Silver Sea with Hodder and Stoughton in 1910, when he was fifty-seven and already a popular novelist. He set it in the one episode of Sark's history that had brought industry to the island: the Cornish-run silver-lead mine at Port Gorey on Little Sark, which was worked from the mid-1830s to 1845, sank its shafts below sea level, pumped them by steam, and shipped a single cargo of ore before it failed. The novel keeps the real names. Old Tom Hamon walks the new captain up from the landing-stage past the Assay Office, the Captain's Office, the forge, Sark's Hope shaft, Le Pelley shaft ninety fathoms below sea-level, the Pump shaft and Prince's shaft to the east, and round behind the engine-house, and the great pumping-engine on the hillside clacks through the whole book.

Its subject is what the mines did to Sark. Nance Hamon, the maid of the title, opens the story wishing the sea would break in through their tunnels and wash them all away, pumps and engines and houses; her father has caught the silver fever, scrimps every pound into shares, hauls for the company with his horses and plans to sell the farm to put more money into the holes at Port Gorey. The English miners and their wives bring parasols and printed cottons that the Sark girls copy, Sunday sightseers throng the lanes to Little Sark to stare at the mines, and a neighbour turns his kitchen into a drinking den for the miners. Stephen Gard, the Cornishman sent to tighten the slack ropes, finds the Sark men paid by the fathom and particular about the so much rather than the fathom, the Cornish and Welsh men on weekly wages doing less than they might, and himself resented as a dictator and an interloper; the brother of the girl he loves, Tom Hamon, becomes his enemy, and when Tom is found dead Gard is accused of his murder.

The mining detail is exact for the place. Gard's first care is the safeguarding of the mines from the sea: the central shafts are far below sea level, the galleries run out under the sea where in bad weather the men can hear the crash of the waves and the grinding of the boulders above their heads, and he has a stout iron door hung at the head of every undersea tunnel, propped open on two wooden legs, so that the first rush of water would knock the legs away and the door would fall into its frame, sealed the tighter the harder the sea pressed, with any man still inside the tunnel drowned like a rat in its hole. The thin veins lure the company on with the hope of mighty pockets, the shafts sink deeper, the galleries branch further under the sea, and there is a constant call for more money lest what is already sunk be lost. The Spectator's reviewer in May 1910 read it as a book about the wild and lawless habits of the men of Sark; it is as much a book about a mine that could not pay.

People

John Oxenham was the pen name of William Arthur Dunkerley (1852-1941), born in Manchester, a journalist, novelist, poet and hymn-writer who co-founded The Idler with Robert Barr in 1892, wrote the hymn In Christ there is no east or west, and served as mayor of Worthing after moving there in 1922. His eldest daughter Elsie Jeanette Oxenham wrote the Abbey girls' school stories. The novel's people are fictional: Stephen Gard the Cornish captain, Nance and Bernel Hamon, their father old Tom Hamon the share-buying farmer, young Tom Hamon, and Grannie.

Legacy today

The novel has stayed in print and in reach. It has been free to read on Project Gutenberg since 2005, was filmed in 1922 as a silent picture directed by and starring Guy Newall opposite Ivy Duke, and is the fullest fictional account of the Sark silver mines, read now beside the engine-house chimney and the capped shafts that still stand above Port Gorey. Wikipedia's account of Little Sark names it as the book that uses the mines and La Coupée as its setting.

Mining language in this record

Words and phrases in this record that are genuine mining terminology, occupations, methods or economic practice — not scenery or ordinary regional language that merely appears in a mining-adjacent work.

Expression	Meaning	MineArchive connection
captain of the mine	The man in day-to-day charge of the workings, Stephen Gard, chosen by the company's managers for his experience with men; the Cornish title the novel uses throughout. (Cornish)	Captain — The same office as the archive's Captain term: the novel's Cornish captain running a Channel Islands mine.
so much per fathom	How the Sark men were paid, by the fathom driven rather than by the week, which old Tom Hamon admits made them more particular about the so much than the fathom. (Cornish)	Tribute and Tutwork — Piecework by the fathom is tutwork; the novel contrasts it with the weekly wages of the Cornish and Welsh men.
submarine galleries	The lateral galleries run out under the sea from the central shafts, where in bad weather the men could hear the waves and boulders overhead.	Submarine Mining — The novel's undersea workings are the real Sark workings beneath Port Gorey; the archive's Submarine Mining term covers the practice.
Assay Office	The first building old Tom Hamon points out on the mine plateau, where the ore's silver content was tested.	No separate assay term exists on the archive; the office is explained on its own terms.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

A Maid of the Silver Sea, published in 1910, is set among the silver mines of Little Sark in the 1830s and 1840s and names the real shafts at Port Gorey: Sark's Hope, Le Pelley, ninety fathoms below sea level, the Pump shaft and Prince's shaft. (documented fact) ^1,2
John Oxenham was the pen name of William Arthur Dunkerley (1852-1941), a Manchester-born journalist, novelist and hymn-writer who co-founded The Idler in 1892 and was later mayor of Worthing. (documented fact) ³
The Cornish mine captain Stephen Gard comes to Sark to drive the failing mine, is hated by the Sark men as an interloper, and the sea's irruption into the undersea galleries and the fate of the mine run through the book beside his courtship of Nance Hamon. (documented fact) ²
The Spectator noticed the novel on 28 May 1910 as a book dealing with the exceedingly wild and lawless habits of the men of the island of Sark. (contemporary account) ⁴
The novel was filmed in 1922 as a silent picture directed by and starring Guy Newall with Ivy Duke. (documented fact) ⁵
The novel describes the mine's defences against the sea: iron trap-doors hung at the head of every undersea tunnel to fall and seal it if the sea broke through, with the miners in the tunnel left to drown unless they reached the gallery first. (documented fact) ²

Mines

Sark's Hope Silver Mine — Sark
The novel's silver mine is Sark's Hope at Port Gorey: it names Sark's Hope, Le Pelley, Pump and Prince's shafts, the engine-house, assay office and jetty, and its captain's fight against the sea breaking into the undersea galleries is the mine's own history.

Real-world mining concepts used here

Captain, Engine House, Pumping Engine, Shaft Capping, Silver

Sources

(secondary) Little Sark — Wikipedia
(primary) A Maid of the Silver Sea, by John Oxenham (1910): full text — Project Gutenberg
(secondary) William Arthur Dunkerley — Wikipedia
(primary) The Maid of the Silver Sea, by John Oxenham (notice, The Spectator, 28 May 1910, p. 25) — The Spectator Archive
(secondary) A Maid of the Silver Sea (novel) — Wikipedia

Record created: 16 October 2026 · Last researched: 16 October 2026