Capstan

A drum on a vertical axle, worked by hand, horse or engine, used at a mine for heavy lifting in the shaft — pumps, pump rods, tubbing and sinking gear — as distinct from the winding engine that raised the coal.

Historical usage

Greenwell's glossary of the northern coal trade gives the North East word: a crab is 'a species of capstan, worked usually by horses, for the purpose of raising or lowering heavy weights, such as pumps, spears, &c., in a shaft', and ground crabs were used in sinking for lowering the sinking set of pumps as the pit was deepened. The rope it worked was the crab rope, and the movable stage on which men repaired a shaft — the cradle — usually hung from it. Metal mines used the same thing for the same purpose: a masonry-lined capstan pit survives beside Skinner's Shaft at Cwmsymlog in Ceredigion, where the capstan raised and lowered pump rods and pipes in a shaft 130 fathoms deep.

How it worked

The drum stood over or beside the shaft mouth, often set in a shallow lined pit, with arms for men or horses to walk round it and a ratchet to hold the load. The rope ran from the drum over sheaves at the shaft head and down to whatever was being lifted. Because the load was heavy and slow rather than fast and light, the capstan was geared for pull rather than speed, and its work was measured in the weight it could hold rather than in tons an hour.

Why it was used

A winding engine is built to lift a cage quickly and repeatedly; it is the wrong tool for hanging a column of pump spears, lowering a length of tubbing or holding a stage of men steady halfway down a shaft. The capstan gave a mine a second, slower lifting line that could be rigged where it was needed and worked independently of the winding.

Risks & limitations

Everything about capstan work happened over an open shaft. When four sinkers at Auckland Park Colliery went to one side of a half cradle in 1863 to lift a cast-iron pipe against the tubbing, their weight tipped it and dropped them fifty-one fathoms; the Inspector's recommendation afterwards was that a cradle should be lashed before men move about on it, and that an iron bar standing a few inches above its edge would give a man something to catch.

Regional variation

In Northumberland and Durham the capstan is a crab, and a ground crab is the one used in sinking. The word capstan itself is general engineering rather than mining vocabulary, which is why Barrowman's Scotch glossary — which deliberately excludes machinery names not peculiar to Scotland — leaves it out, and why some glossaries fold it into the whim. The distinction worth keeping is one of purpose: a whim winds coal or ore, a capstan lifts the gear.

Related terminology

Pumping Engine, Shaft Sinking, Whim

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.

• Purbeck Marble Quarries — Dorset (well documented example)
  Named twice in this record, first in the workings: “…bed. Stone was raised in wagons or baskets on a rope worked by a capstan winch, itself usually turned by a horse or donkey walking in a…”

Sources

1. (primary) G. C. Greenwell, A Glossary of Terms used in the Coal Trade of Northumberland and Durham (first published 1849; 1888 edition) — G. C. Greenwell, colliery viewer; digitised by the Internet Archive
2. (secondary) Mining Glossary — Mining History Association

Record created: 4 September 2026 · Last researched: 4 September 2026