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 he had never checked speed through the high girders. Painters who had worked on the bridge in mid-1879 said that it shook when a train was on it. When a train entered the southern high girders the bridge had shaken at the north end, both east-west and, more strongly, up-and-down. The shaking was worse when trains were going faster, which they did: 'when the Fife boat was nearly over and the train had only got to the south end of the bridge it was a hard drive'. A joiner who had worked on the bridge from May to October 1879