{"id":4921,"date":"2025-04-08T10:19:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T10:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/4921\/"},"modified":"2025-04-08T10:19:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T10:19:14","slug":"man-suffered-one-of-worst-deaths-ever-after-getting-stuck-in-british-cave-his-body-has-never-been-recovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/4921\/","title":{"rendered":"Man suffered one of worst deaths ever after getting stuck in British cave – his body has never been recovered"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a scenario worthy of a nightmare.<\/p>\n

Trapped in a ‘corkscrew’ shaft deep underground and with no hope of escape and slowly becoming delirious from inhaling your own exhaled carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n

At around 4pm on March 22, 1959, this\u00a0is what happened to 20-year-old Oxford University<\/a>\u00a0student Neil Moss.<\/p>\n

Entranced by the chance to explore a newly-discovered crevice inside Peak Cavern, a famous cave outside Castleton, Derbyshire, he had been with seven fellow ‘potholers’ when he got stuck.<\/p>\n

He went feet first inside the 18in-wide shaft \u2013 which was around 40ft deep \u2013 and quickly became jammed by the shoulders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The efforts to rescue him involved hundreds of fellow amateur cavers and members of the Royal Navy and RAF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But none of them could save Moss from his terrible fate. He was declared dead late on March 24 and his ‘tomb’ was sealed up forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Rescuers <\/p>\n

Rescuers at Peak Cavern in Castleton, Derbyshire, during the operation to free trapped caver Neil Moss, March 1959<\/p>\n

Your browser does not support iframes.<\/p>\n

Oscar Hackett Neil Moss was the son of a cotton industry executive.<\/p>\n

A member of the British Speleological Association, he was very much an amateur caver.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His mother, speaking from her home in Cheshire after he got stuck, admitted her son ‘cannot be called greatly experienced’.<\/p>\n

\"Neil <\/p>\n

Neil Moss, who died inside an 18in-wide shaft in 1959<\/p>\n

The main entrance to Peak Cavern was just 200yards from Castleton’s high street.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the crevice that Moss was stuck in lay nearly a mile beyond the point that the public could tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Mail’s original reporting told how an oxygen mask was lowered to him at midnight on March 22 as squads of ‘potholers’ brought from Sheffield, Manchester, Derby and Nottingham<\/a> worked in the bitter cold to try to reach him.<\/p>\n

The rescuers were able to get a rope around him but it snapped when they tried to haul him up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moss, the Mail said at the time, was ‘wedged so tightly’ that he could not lift his arms.<\/p>\n

He became too weak to eat the food that was passed to him, or to put the oxygen mask on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Mud-covered <\/p>\n

Mud-covered rescuers John Needham and Geoffrey Sutton at Peak Cavern in Castleton, Derbyshire<\/p>\n

\"Flight <\/p>\n

Flight Lieutenant John Carter (right) and a tearful fellow rescuer seen after spending hours trying to free Neil Moss<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A policeman tends to rescue worker Michael Walker during the operation to free Neil Moss<\/p>\n

\"Geoffrey <\/p>\n

Geoffrey Sutton, potholer, who attempted to rescue trapped potholer Neil Moss<\/p>\n

\"Caving <\/p>\n

Caving veteran and inventor Bob Leakey seen at Peak Cavern during the rescue operation<\/p>\n

\"June <\/p>\n

June Bailey, potholer, at Peak Cavern in Castleton, Derbyshire<\/p>\n

\"Ronald <\/p>\n

Ronald Peters, an expert potholer, who received the George Medal for gallantry, for his attempts to rescue trapped potholer Neil Moss<\/p>\n

At 1.15am on March 23, a worried rescue worker said: ‘He is still talking, but his speech is slurred.’<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Daily Mail’s coverage on March 23<\/p>\n

By the following day \u2013 around 36 hours after he became trapped \u2013 hope that Moss would be pulled alive had faded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The young caver had lost consciousness more than once.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A doctor on the scene who had spent nine hours trying to rescue him said: ‘Only a miracle can save him now. His breathing is going fainter and fainter. ‘<\/p>\n

By then, teams from the Navy and RAF had joined the rescue efforts, which were being hampered by the shaft’s corkscrew shape.<\/p>\n

One rescuer explained: ‘Moss is stuck in a sort of hollow corkscrew. The only way to free him will be to revolve his body in the whole… to unscrew him.’<\/p>\n

The situation was made more difficult by the fact that Moss, at 6ft 3in, was a big man.<\/p>\n

Derby man Ron Peters was able to get to Moss, but could not free him. He said at the time: ‘I just managed to put my teeth on Moss’s back. That was about as far as I could get.<\/p>\n

‘There was a rope around him, but it had broken. I tied a new rope to what remained of the old lifeline and we managed to raise him about 18in on that pull.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Peters endangered himself in trying to get Moss out. He ended up suffering from exhaustion and carbon dioxide poisoning.<\/p>\n

Another rescuer, 18-year-old Roy Fryer, said: ‘The air is very bad indeed, full of carbon dioxide, and I soon got a splitting headache.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The front page of the Daily Mail on March 24, 1959, when Neil Moss had been trapped for more than 24 hours<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The second page of the Mail’s coverage on March 24, 1959<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Mail’s coverage on March 25, after Moss had been declared dead<\/p>\n

‘The people in charge warned us we would only be able to stay in that area for about ten minutes.<\/p>\n

‘I went on breathing oxygen but had to give up. I suppose I got to within about 10ft of the trapped man. We could hear him then breathing quite distinctly.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

After more than 12 hours of rescue efforts, the volunteers felt they were no closer to freeing Moss.<\/p>\n

Techniques they had tried included\u00a0chipping away at the rock with crowbars and hammers in the hope of widening the shaft, and digging a new tunnel to get underneath Moss.<\/p>\n

Moss’s fate was sealed at the end of the second day of rescue efforts, when the order came to withdraw because heavy rain was threatening to flood the main cavern.<\/p>\n

When the rain eased off, rescuers returned to the head of the corkscrew shaft but could no longer hear Moss breathing.<\/p>\n

The inquest into his death stated his time of death as being 3am on Tuesday, March 24.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moss’s father Eric, who had kept vigil by the main tunnel entrance throughout the ordeal, insisted that his son’s body stay where it was, to avoid anyone else dying.<\/p>\n

The entrance to the shaft was covered by loose rocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For his selfless efforts to save Moss, Ron Peters was awarded the George Medal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fellow rescuers Les Salmon, John Thompson and Flight Lieutenant John Carter received the British Empire Medal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moss’s tragic story was re-told in 2004 novel One Last Breath and in 2006 documentary Fight for Life: The Neil Moss Story.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s a scenario worthy of a nightmare. Trapped in a ‘corkscrew’ shaft deep underground and with no hope…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[92,77,2348,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-4921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-history","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114301839812722647","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}