January 1880: The aftermath of the Tay Bridge Disaster

Mention the Tay Bridge disaster today and the result is likely to be a smirk: its strongest association is famously the worst poem, by the worst poet, published in English. Written — perpetrated might be a better word — by William Topaz McGonnagall, it begins:

“Beautiful railway bridge of the silv’ry Tay
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last sabbath day of 1879
Which shall be remembered for a very long time.”

and goes sharply downhill from there.

So far, so amusing: bring out the comedy Scottish accent and get orating. But a look back into the Engineer archives will quickly banish the smiles. The disaster was horrible and unprecedented: at the height of the Victorian age of heroic engineering, in the crucible of the industrial revolution and the homeland of the steam railway, a showpiece of engineering collapsed while a train was crossing it. Nobody survived; there were sixty known victims, but only 46 bodies were ever recovered. It’s now believed that as many as 75 people died (McGonnagall’s fact-checking was a bad as his poetry).