The Famous Tay Whale Dundee city centre. Paul Godfrey described McGonagall on the strength of the "Tay Whale" and other verse as "the worst poet in the English language". Hugh MacDiarmid wrote of the "Tay Whale" that "what this [the verses about John Wood and the Tay Whale] amounts to, of course, is simply what quite uneducated and stupid people—the two adjectives by no means necessarily go together, for many uneducated people have great vitality and a raciness of utterance altogether lacking here—would produce if asked to recount something they had read in a newspaper." MacDiarmid continued that "in their retailings of, or comments
Tay Rail Bridge eight months. A good deal would depend on the weather but this was far from favourable. Despite this, on 22 September 1877, the first engine crossed the bridge, and upon its completion in early 1878 the Tay Bridge was the longest in the world. While visiting the city, Ulysses S. Grant commented that it was "a big bridge for a small city". Like all UK rail lines, the Tay Bridge was subject to a Board of Trade inspection before it could carry passenger trains. The inspection was conducted 25–27 February 1878 by Major General Hutchinson of the Railway Inspectorate, who