Twenty men died in the Snaefell mine disaster, almost all of them within minutes of reaching the lower levels. It remains the worst mining disaster in Isle of Man history. The fire is thought to have started from a candle igniting timberwork, a hazard the practice of leaving a burned-down candle to light the next one had always carried, but which this particular weekend had set in the worst possible place. By the time the day shift descended, the lower levels were filled with carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is colourless, odourless and quickly fatal at high concentrations, and the miners could not have seen what they were breathing. Most never came back up. The rescue went on through the day in conditions that were themselves nearly impossible, and the last survivor brought out alive, James Kneale, was found at five in the afternoon.

Among the dead was Robert Kelly, whose body could not be recovered from the lower workings. The Wikipedia source for this article carries a section heading that reads, simply, "Continued efforts to retrieve the body of Robert Kelly." That heading does a lot of quiet work. It tells you that the mine could not be entered for some time after the disaster, even by rescuers, because the air would not clear. It tells you that someone, somewhere, wanted Robert Kelly brought home, and that the inability to do so was its own ongoing grief. The official investigation into the disaster was led by Sir Clement Le Neve Foster, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of mines, who descended into the mine repeatedly through May and June 1897 to work out why the ventilation system had failed.

The Snaefell mine had a single working shaft and, beside it, a wooden upcast shaft that ran up the slope of the mountain to draw bad air out. The ventilation depended on doors at intermediate levels being closed at the end of every shift, so that the cool air entering the main shaft would be forced all the way down to the bottom level at 171 fathoms before it could escape. When Foster made his examinations on 15 May, descending as far as the 74-fathom level, he found a doorway there left wide open. The fresh air entering the mine was turning at the 74-fathom level and venting straight back to the surface, never reaching the levels below. Further mouse tests suggested the door at the 130-fathom level was also open, allowing air to short-circuit out without ever clearing the chamber where the men had died.

Mining resumed after the disaster, but the yield steadily declined. Following a substantial rockfall in the shaft in 1908, the cost of clearing the debris was judged uneconomical and the mine was closed. Even then the site did not quite stop. In 1955, a company called Metalliferous Holdings Limited assessed the spoil heaps at Snaefell, Laxey and Foxdale and concluded that approximately 400,000 tons of lead-zinc spoil could be re-processed for ore. Twenty-two men were employed on round-the-clock shifts to do it. None of the original workings were reopened. The mountain itself has long since reclaimed most of the surface scars, but the disaster of 1897 is remembered each May on the Isle of Man, in articles, talks and a published account by Andrew Scarffe; an Isle of Man Steam Railway connection means the names of the dead are still spoken aloud in services of remembrance for a community that has not forgotten.