Tay Bridge Disaster - The Disaster

The Disaster

On the evening of 28 December 1879, a violent storm (10 to 11 on the Beaufort Scale) was blowing virtually at right angles to the bridge. Witnesses said the storm was as bad as any they had seen in the 20–30 years they had lived in the area; one called it a hurricane, as bad as a typhoon he had been in the China Sea. The wind speed was measured at Glasgow – 71 mph (114 km/h) (averaged over an hour) – and Aberdeen, but not at Dundee. Higher windspeeds were recorded over shorter intervals, but at the inquiry an expert witness warned of their unreliability, and declined to estimate conditions at Dundee from readings taken elsewhere. (One modern interpretation of available information suggests winds were gusting to 80 mph (129 km/h).)

Usage of the bridge was restricted to one train at a time by a signalling block system using a baton as a token. At 7:13 pm a train from the south slowed to pick up the baton from the signal cabin at the south end of the bridge, then headed out onto the bridge, picking up speed. The signalman turned away to log this and then tended the cabin fire but a friend present in the cabin watched the train: when it had got about 200 yards (183 m) from the cabin he saw sparks flying from the wheels on the east side, this continued for no more than three minutes, by then the train was in the high girders; then "there was a sudden bright flash of light, and in an instant there was total darkness, the tail lamps of the train, the sparks and the flash of light all ... disappearing at the same instant" The signalman saw (and when told believed) none of this but when the train didn't appear on the line off the bridge into Dundee he tried to talk to the signal cabin at the north end of the bridge, but found that all communication with it had been lost.

Not only was the train in the river, but so were the high girders, and much of the ironwork of their supporting piers. Divers exploring the wreckage later found the train still within the girders, with the engine in the fifth span of the southern 5-span division. 56 tickets for Dundee had been collected from passengers on the train before crossing the bridge; allowing for season ticket holders, tickets for other destinations, and for railway employees 74–75 people were believed to have been on the train. There were no survivors; there were 60 known victims, but only 46 bodies were recovered, two not until February 1880.