John Warren (mining engineer)
John Warren (c.1837 – 31 October 1910), often known as Captain Warren, was a mining engineer and mine manager who worked mainly in Australia. Born in Newton Abbot, England, he went into mining at age 13 and gained experience in Cornwall and in the United States.
By 1864 he was in South Australia, taking over as manager of the Karkarilla copper mine at Moonta, succeeding George Vercoe. The mine later became uneconomic and was renamed Hamley in 1867; Warren also ran the nearby Paramatta and Wheal James mines. He left Paramatta in 1876 and managed the Balade mine in New Caledonia for about two and a half years. He then returned to South Australia to run the Bird-in-Hand gold mine near Woodside, followed by the Block 10 mine at Broken Hill for more than ten years.
At Broken Hill he and engineer T. J. Greenway worked to solve the sulphide problem in the ore, which contained zinc sulphide and was hard to process. A miners’ strike around 1892 occurred when the Mineowners’ Association changed contracts; Warren kept production up by hiring new workers.
In June 1901 he resigned as Block 10 manager after a dispute with assistant L. W. Grayson; Grayson also resigned, but Warren was urged to stay and was reappointed the next month. In 1902 he became president of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers and a Justice of the Peace, though he resigned again later that year due to cost-cutting. He then briefly managed the Cobar-Chesney mine in 1903 and the Broken Hill Junction Mining Company in 1904–05.
Warren had a daughter born in December 1866 and later married Marian Mortimore (c. 1838–1903). He died in North Adelaide on 31 October 1910.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 20:41 (CET).