On 24 June 1967, six young cavers drowned in Mossdale Caverns, Yorkshire, in what remains the world's worst caving tragedy. The victims, aged 19 to 26, were two miles inside the labyrinthine cave system when a sudden flood trapped them in narrow passages. Despite their experience as some of Britain's best cavers, they had no escape as water levels rose rapidly.
Mossdale Caverns, classed as Super Severe, was notorious as Britain's most testing cave. Its far reaches have been seen by fewer people than have walked on the Moon. The disaster made world headlines, but public reaction was mixed, with many viewing the cavers as reckless thrill-seekers. In the 1960s, caving was a DIY adventure for working-class lads, pushing boundaries in uncharted underground worlds.
The cave is a geological freak, with nearly seven miles of passages often only inches high. Most of the stream entering the cave disappears near the entrance, reappearing five miles away at Black Keld. The unexplored link between these points is an obsession for some cavers, but Mossdale's fearsome reputation daunted most from its first exploration in 1941 by Bob Leakey, now 93.
Leakey's solo exploration of Mossdale was a feat of unimaginable courage and endurance, comparable in caving terms to reaching the South Pole. However, the 1967 tragedy underscored the extreme dangers of the cave, where flooding can occur without warning, turning the system into a death trap.
