The accident happened some time after 1680 when David Davies worked the mine. A shaft (the site of which is still visible today) had been sunk in the stream bed to about 7 fathoms deep. The stream was diverted via a dam, through rock-cut channels away from its original course. The stream bed can be seen to have been stoped away - there are numerous stemple holes & drainage channels cut in the rock. However, it is said that the dam burst, the stream reverting back to it's original course and flooding the workings with water & silt, drowning several miners.
Postlethwaite (Mines & Mining in the English Lake Counties)says that when the mine was reopened many years later nothing was found of the drowned men -only some old tools and 40 or 50 feet of chain.
However, Tyler (Goldscope and the Mines of the Derwent Fells) says that the remains of the men were recovered 7 years later & buried.
Its a great site to visit, everything is cut into the rock, even the waterwheel pits, and there is a particularly nice Elizabethan 'Coffin' level by the stream, where the vein enters the foot of Barrow mountain.