The company denied any problems relating to their structure and design of the dam, and believed that the cause of the crack and the collapse involved a landslide or landslip. Public perception, informed by the Coroner's court and the press, saw the collapse as due to a failure in the mode of construction of the dam. The professional inquiry was conducted, and progressed to parliamentary investigations and institutional deliberations. The experts could not agree about the causes of the Dale Dyke collapse. They noted that even with the cracks the collapse of the whole dam was unforeseeable. The corporation had found two men who either were or were becoming president and then found five other engineers, all of whom had already been or about to become presidents of the Civils. They thought that on the basis of landslipping they would pardon the Sheffield Waterworks Company from any carelessness and that the collapse of the Dale Dyke Dam was an unpredictable accident. They continued: