Adventurer

Historical usage

A shareholder in a mine, financing its running costs in return for a share of any profit — the role at the heart of the Cornish and Devon cost book system (see that term).

How it worked

Adventurer was the standard term across Cornish and Devon mining for anyone who bought shares in a mine and shared in its costs and profits under the cost book system; the earliest recorded use at Levant Mine dates from April 1787, when local resident William Veale noted in his diary that he had become an adventurer in the mine. Adventurers paid into a mine's running costs by 'calls' — extra payments per share — when expenses outran income, and received dividends when the mine was in profit; a distinction was also drawn between ordinary adventurers and 'out-adventurers', shareholders who held shares mainly to secure the right to supply the mine with goods or services rather than purely for investment return.

Why it was used

Being an adventurer let anyone with capital take a direct financial stake in a mine's fortunes without needing to run it themselves, spreading both the cost and the risk of mining across however many shareholders bought in.

Risks & limitations

An adventurer's exposure was open-ended in practice, if not in law: repeated calls for more money on a struggling mine could turn what began as a modest investment into a mounting drain, with no guarantee the mine would ever turn a profit in return.

Mines associated with this term

Included only where MineArchive's own research gives a reasonable evidential basis — not every mine where this might plausibly apply.

• Ecton Copper Mines — Staffordshire (well documented example)
  An 'Adventurers' company financed and ran the mine.
• Esgair Hir and Esgair Fraith Mines — Powys (well documented example)
  An 'Adventurers' company financed and ran the mine.

Sources

1. (secondary) An eternal lesson for investors from a ill-fated silver mine — The Flying Frisby
2. (secondary) History of Levant Mine — National Trust

Record created: 22 August 2026 · Last researched: 22 August 2026