10 Unusual Facts You Didn’t Know About The Tay Bridge Disaster
9. The Designer Of The Bridge Received A Knighthood From Queen Victoria
Born in Cumbria in 1822, Thomas Bouch became a well known railway engineer whose name is attached to many railway projects in Scotland and England. Undoubtedly, the most famous of his projects was the ill-fated first Tay Bridge. The opening of the Tay Bridge meant that the time it took to reach Dundee from London was greatly reduced. Queen Victoria even used the bridge when she was returning to England from her holiday home at Balmoral in Scotland. As the designer of the bridge, Bouch was asked to attend the royal crossing by the North British Railway company and there he was presented to the Queen. Bouch was then summoned to Windsor Castle by the Queen, where she knighted him for his achievements in designing the bridge.
Following the collapse of the Bridge, the enquiry by the British Board of Trade found that serious faults in Bouch’s design contributed to the bridge’s failure and this ended his career. Bouch died from stress aged 58 in October 1880, less than a year after the Tay Bridge collapsed.