Death, Dynamite and Disaster

by Rosa Matheson

  Eighteen months later, the bridge was once again tested by nature’s forces and Grothe commented:

  Since 1871 the storm had not raged with such fierceness as on the night of February 3rd, 1877. Without any barometrical warning, it came down at four o’clock in the afternoon with an unparalleled suddenness.11

  These incidences should have been useful portents as to the fickleness, scale and power of nature’s force in this area and of nature’s uncontrollable involvement in this enterprise, but sadly, they were not.

  The Event

  Sunday 28 December 1879 had started reasonably well weather wise. It was reasonable enough not to excite comment over the late afternoon and early evening; however, it began to get windier and, by the time the train previous to the fateful one travelled over the bridge, the wind effect was noticeable and raising comment: ‘The rapid fall of the barometer indicated mischief brewing in the Tay.’12 By the time the 4.15 p.m. train from Edinburgh arrived, a full scale storm was raging with strong gusty squalls. The storm was not confined to the Firth of Tay, it also blew across the land. In Glasgow ‘the wind blew a perfect hurricane’; in Edinburgh it was strong enough to ‘throw persons off their feet’; in the suburbs near the fated bridge the houses felt the ‘full fury’ of the wind, which blew off chimney pots, whirled slates in the air and even downed trees. The Annual Register wrote, on the day following the accident that the wind was ‘… more violent than had ever been known in the century … a terrible hurricane struck the bridge.’

  Several of the witnesses called before the Court of Inquiry also remarked on the severity of the wind. One was Captain Scott of the ex-Royal Navy Frigate Mars, a training ship for young boys in need of care, discipline and education, which was permanently moored in the River Tay just under a mile away from the bridge. Captain Scott knew about the quality of storms, being a seasoned seaman. Using the Beaufort Scale (originally introduced for the Royal Navy for measuring the ‘force’ of the winds i.e. 1–12 with 12 being the most violent), he declared that overall he considered it was a 10 (a storm), but in the gusts it measured around 10/11 (a violent storm). Several other witnesses hazarded a guess or estimate of the wind force, most agreeing that it was ‘very strong’. Yet it was remarked in various journals, such as the Saturday Review (1880), that, despite the severity of the storm, no other bridges had fallen and the question was asked – why not?

  Before official permission was given to open the bridge, Major General Hutchinson, Inspector for the Board of Trade, had tested the bridge over three days as severely as was thought necessary. He had tested it with one, two and then more engines going together across the bridge. Finally, he had had six locomotives, each weighing seventy-three tons, coupled together, go across the bridge at a speed of 40mph to test the resistance to vertical strain. He had also watched, from a boat, a train crossing the bridge. He had instructed that no train should travel at a speed higher than 25mph, and also recorded his wish to have an opportunity of observing the effects of high wind when a train of carriages was crossing the bridge. Unfortunately, this never happened.

  On completion of the work it was recorded that, ‘No part of the structure has shown a sign of failure although the storms, since the highest and most exposed parts of the structure were built, have been of unsurpassed severity.’ It begs the question, then – was Sunday’s storm the ‘most violent ever known to Dundee’ and if so, why was the devastation not more widespread? Writing one year later, in the Journal of the Scottish Meteorological Society, A. Buchan remarked that the storm had ‘presented peculiarities that, taken together, made it one of the most remarkable storms yet observed in the British Isles’.13

  The Train

  ‘The train from Edinburgh which fell with the bridge’14 was the regular 4.15 p.m. Sunday afternoon passenger train, carrying mails (this service was commonly known by locals as ‘the Edinburgh’). The passengers began their journey at Waverley Station, Edinburgh, and travelled by local train to Granton Harbour on the south coast of the River Forth, there the passengers transferred to the ferry boat to cross the river to Burntisland, where the connecting train to Fife was waiting for them. It stopped at nearly all the wayside stations from Burntisland to Dundee. (The North British Railway had not yielded to the sabbatarian opposition in the way one of its constituent companies – the Edinburgh & Glasgow – had, and by 1879 such opposition was very much less of an issue generally.)15

  The train from Edinburgh arrived, in due course, at St Fort Station, the final station before the bridge, at around 7.05 p.m., it was late and the tickets of the passengers for Dundee were collected as usual. William Friend, ticket collector, collected those in the third class, by the engine, and Alexander Inglis, porter at St Fort, collected those in the second class. There were no passengers in First, he stated.16 Because of the weather conditions, Robert Morris, the stationmaster, also gave a helping hand.17 Morris believed he was the last person to talk to the people on the train.

  The ticket collectors would later inform the Inquiry that there were, on the train at that time, fifty-seven passengers for Dundee, five or six for Broughty Ferry, five for Newport (and two season ticket holders), plus the usual crew, the engine driver, stoker, and mail guard with two other guards travelling as passengers, making a total of seventy-four or seventy-five persons. (Recent research has shown that only two can be accounted for going to Broughty Ferry, and that actually, the train did not go anywhere near Newport. St Fort was the last stop in Fife.)18

  At approximately 7.13 p.m., the engine reached Wormit signal box, the train slowed and Thomas Barclay, signalman on duty, handed the baton to the stoker, John Marshall. This was the driver’s authority to proceed across the bridge knowing that no other train was there. Barclay was the last person to have contact with the train. The train moved off at the regulatory 3mph into the darkness, and into the history books. What happened next has become the biggest mystery in the history of Fife and British railways.

  Many eyes watched the train as it set off to cross the bridge.19 The nearest were those of John Watt, who had worked with the NBR for twelve years who was also a friend of signalman, John Barclay. Watt, the older man, had gone to keep Barclay company in the Wormit signal box. Whilst Barclay, having given the baton to the fireman and struggled against the wind back into the box, was signalling, to the northern cabin, of the train’s imminent arrival and noting its departure in his book, Watt’s eyes were glued to the tail lamps at the back of the train. The train travelled some 200 yards before throwing out sparks from its wheels, ‘after they had continued for about three minutes there was a sudden bright flash of light, and in an instant there was total darkness.’20 Watt told Barclay what he had seen. ‘Her tail lamps have gone,’ he said.

  Barclay was not unduly concerned, believing that the train would reappear at any minute. The bridge was not, after all, a straight one, nor a completely flat one. ‘From the south shore it curved left for three spans, bringing itself at right angles to the course of the river … then it turned to the right again. It fell slightly for the first three spans, ran level for another three, then climbed an incline, of 1 in 490, to Pier 29. From here, it was level until Pier 36 where it began to fall, initially 1 in 130, but at Pier 37 around 1 in 74, until the north shore was reached. Going up and down it had the appearance of a “giant centipede treading the water”.’ 21

  Having finished his chores, Barclay tried to ring the signalman at the northern end of the bridge, just to check, but got no answer. He tried both the telephone and telegraph and found that they were not working. The men realised something was seriously wrong – but what? They went outside and tried to get along the bridge, but were driven back by the strength of the wind. They retraced their steps and went along the Tayport line by the shore side hoping to get a better view.

  What they saw as the moon came out from behind the clouds was beyond belief – a large section of the bridge was down. The men still did not know if the train had reached the other side. Ba
rclay needed to go back to his post in the signal box (another train was due and needed warning), whilst Watt made his way to Tayport where he informed the Company Agent what he had seen.

  On the northern side of the water there was just as much consternation when the train did not arrive, and no information had been received from the southern signal box. Henry Somerville was an experienced signalman, used to discrepancies in timing, so he gave the train nine, rather than the usual five, minutes to arrive before worrying. When it still had not, he became anxious. He went to his highest view point, inside his cabin, and looked out. He could see nothing – no lights, no train. He raised the official alarm that the train had not appeared.

  James Smith, Tay Bridge stationmaster (where crowds were already gathering because news, from those who had watched the train fall, had spread), and James Roberts, the locomotive foreman, who had come to the sidings to deal with wagons blown about by the force of the storm, were faced with a dilemma. How could they find out if there something was wrong with the bridge? There was only one way, unable to stand against the might of the wind, and hanging on for dear life, they crawled on hands and knees along the bridge. Smith had to stop. He could not go further, but Roberts, belly against the planks, slowly dragged and pushed himself along in the seemingly never-ending darkness, until he came to the gap in the structure. There could now be no doubt.

  A telegram was sent from the stationmaster at Dundee to the NBR’s Company Engineer at Portobello, near Edinburgh:

  Terrible accident on Bridge – one or more of high girders blown down – am not sure as to the safety of last train down from Edinr [Edinburgh] will advise further as soon as can be obtained.

  Unfortunately, when the information was released to the public, the company’s statement said that there been ‘about 300 passengers’. The next day the dreadful news was flashed around the world:

  The long, tortuous crawl of James Robert, locomotive foreman, out along the bridge until he reached the last pier standing. Clinging on for his life, and looking out from the north side, the scene depicted would have brought home to him the horror and enormity of the situation.

  TERRIBLE DISASTER IN SCOTLAND

  PART OF THE TAY BRIDGE BLOWN DOWN

  LOSS OF 300 LIVES. 22

  All around the world people, like those in Dundee and Fifeshire, were stunned.

  When the train from Edinburgh went into the water, it went in complete. No part was left behind. One moment it was all there, the next, with a ‘flash of light’, ‘a flare of flames’, ‘a spray of sparks’ (all descriptions of what eyewitnesses reported they had seen) it was totally gone. It had vanished. To paraphrase the famous words of Queen Elizabeth I after a great storm had dispersed the Spanish Armada, ‘God breathed, and it was gone.’ (And so said many sabbatarians, whose voices once more were raised in condemnation of such commercial activities on the Sabbath. The Christian Herald called it ‘a judgement of the Almighty upon those who … commit the outrage of violating the sanctity of the Lord’s Day’.23)

  A whole train gone was as incomprehensible as the Tay Bridge falling down. ‘At Dundee business is at a standstill. Nothing but the disaster is spoken of. The lower part of the town has been crowded all day with persons eager for information and tonight the crowd is still dense.’24

  ‘The train from Edinburgh which fell with the bridge’ was drawn by the No. 224, a 4-4-0 passenger engine by Thomas Wheatley which, according to Dr Euan Cameron was, when introduced in 1871, a significant engine type of its time. He writes:

  Thomas Wheatley’s first two 4-4-0 passenger engines were some of the most interesting and, in their own way, significant passenger locomotives to appear in the mid-nineteenth century. 224 and 264 represent the turning-point between the mid-Victorian 2-4-0 and the late Victorian era bogie passenger locomotive. They were the first inside-cylinder 4-4-0 tender locomotives with Adams bogies to run in Great Britain, and were derived very closely from a corresponding 2-4-0 class, Wheatley’s two large-wheeled 2-4-0s Nos. 141 and 164.25

  The driving wheels were 6 feet 6 inches in diameter, and coupled; the cylinders were 17 inches in diameter, with a stroke of 24 inches. 26

  Ironically, this was not the 224’s usual run, but it was rostered in place of a Drummond 0-4-2T, No. 89 Ladybank, which was having its boiler washed out. 27

  The search for the train began within minutes, but it would take days to find and weeks to retrieve it. Although the engine and its tender was located, by diver Edward Simpson, on Wednesday 31 December it remained where it was, within the girder lying on its side in the murky waters, for some considerable time. In early April 1880, concerted efforts were made to retrieve it. The first time, the chains broke. The second time, just two days later, was even more tantalising because the locomotive was raised to the surface when the salvage equipment gave way. Not until 10 April was it pulled from the waters and found to be in surprisingly reasonable condition. It stood waiting on the beach until it was sent to NBR’s Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Works at Cowlairs for repairs, and it went on its own wheels!

  Once it arrived at Cowlairs and was examined properly, by Dugald Drummond, the NBR’s locomotive superintendent, it was found that the throttle valve, or regulator, was fully open. The reversing lever was in the third position from mid gear and its Westinghouse brakes were not applied. One can assume, therefore, that the driver had no warning or inclination of the forthcoming disaster. If the driver had thought that anything untoward was happening, or going to happen, he would have shut down the regulator; drivers do this so often that they do it instinctively.

  The engine was restored to full working order, more or less in original condition.28 After its rescue and ‘face-lift’, the 224 gained a certain notoriety and, after its several ‘dives’, was wryly named ‘the Diver’ by the NBR staff. Once repaired and refurbished, it carried on working for the North British Railway until 1908. Drivers, however, refused to take another 224 across the new Tay Bridge. This was not done again until 28 December 1908, the 29th anniversary of the accident. The Secretary of the NBR, writing in a letter dated 18 January 1911, stated: ‘The engine in question is No. 224 and is employed on the Passenger service between Dunfermline and Glasgow and Thornton. It is a bogie engine with 17in by 24in cylinders, four coupled wheels 6ft 6in diameter, and bogie wheels 3ft 7in diameter. The engine was reboilered in 1887 and has since been in continuous service.’

  ‘The Diver’ gained notoriety, and the carriages it pulled behind became part of one of the several small mysteries in the whole story (others being the real number of those who died and the numbers of tickets collected in respect of the numbers of passengers identified.) The carriages behind were – three third class (nos 579, 629, 650), one first class (no. 414) and one second (no. 138), plus the guard’s brake van (no. 146).

  When asked about the line-up of the train just after the accident, Robert Morris, stationmaster at St Fort Station, stated that there were two third-class carriages behind the engine, one first, then another third, followed by a second and the brake van. Dugald Drummond, as well as being the NBR’s locomotive superintendent, was a respected locomotive designer and builder. He was a man of strong views, known for his outbursts and for being forthright in his opinion. In his first report to the Inquiry he confirmed this line-up. Some newspapers report this arrangement too, ‘the composition of the ill-fated train is believed to be as follows – Engine, two third-class carriages, first-class carriage, third-class carriage, second-class carriage, and the van.’29 Henry Law (civil engineer ordered by the Court of Inquiry to carry out a full examination of the bridge and the facts) also believed this to be so; however, intriguingly, by the time this was put into print for the ‘official statement’ of the Inquiry, the positions had changed. Allan Rodgers writes in his article in the NBRSG Special Edition Journal, that the line-up as per the ‘corrected’ version was, ‘a 4-wheeler Third, 6-wheeler First, 4-wheeler Third, 4-wheeler Third, 4-wheeler Second, and a 4-wheeler brake van.’ Wha
t caused this confusion, and what really was the ‘correct’ version? Rodgers argues that the original version, given by Drummond is the correct version, based on the findings and reports of the divers. (His adaption of an illustrative diagram, showing where they say they found the carriages and engine, appears to strongly support this.30)

  Why should we worry regarding the position of the carriages at all? Well, the type and nature (size, weight, materials) and position of the carriage may add to, clarify or defend the theories already being purported. There was, at the time of the accident, a great deal of suggestion, and argument, that the small, light nature of the second-class carriage (it weighed just 5 tons and 19cwts) would have left it vulnerable to lifting in the wind. The other carriages weighed a good deal more; the third class in front of it weighed 9 tons 16cwts and the brake van behind 8 tons 9 cwt unloaded,31 although that night it was carrying a large number of mail bags and some luggage.

  Henry Law looked seriously at the nature and position of the second-class carriage because of the proposition that this, along with the guard’s van, ‘tilted against the leeward girder’ by the wind could have caused enough damage ‘to destroy portions of the girders and occasion the fall’. This was, indeed, claimed to be the case by Sir Thomas Bouch, designer of the bridge. Mr Rothery (Chairman of the Court of Inquiry), however, questioned how such ‘a very light carriage … so lightly constructed [could have] done so much injury to the bridge as to have caused more than 1,000 yards of it to fall?’32 The debate remains very much unresolved, and continues even today.