The Tay Bridge Disaster The Tay Bridge Disaster "The Tay Bridge Disaster" is a poem written in 1880 by the Scottish poet William McGonagall, who has been widely recognised as the worst poet in history. The poem recounts the events of the evening of December 28, 1879, when, during a severe gale, the Tay Rail Bridge at Dundee collapsed as a train was passing over it with the loss of all on board (now thought to be 75 people and not 90 as stated in the poem). The foundations of the bridge were not removed and are alongside the newer bridge. The poem is
Tay Bridge disaster the support of circumstantial evidence – that the bridge might well have failed at the north end first; he explicitly dismissed the claim that the train had hit the girders before the bridge fell. Yolland and Barlow concluded that the bridge had failed at the south end first; and made no explicit finding as to whether the train had hit the girders. They noted instead that apart from Bouch himself, Bouch's witnesses claimed/conceded that the bridge failure was due to a shock loading on lugs heavily stressed by windloading. Their report is therefore consistent with either a view that the