10 Unusual Facts You Didn’t Know About The Tay Bridge Disaster
5. Faults Had Been Overlooked During The Construction Of The Bridge
During the enquiry into the disaster, the quality of the iron used for the bridge’s support columns was called into question. The components of the bridge were constructed in Scotland at a factory in Wormit however the iron used in the factory was sent from the English town of Middlesbrough by Hopkins Giles and Co, the company contracted to construct the bridge. The men working at the factory had been used to working with Scottish iron which was a lot less sluggish and required less heat to mould than English iron.
This led to imperfections in the manufacturing of the support columns, with air pockets forming due to the iron cooling before it had fully filled the mould. These pockets were often just filled in using lead or a mixture of resin and steel filings known as Beaumont Egg. The enquiry also found that the columns of the bridge had been frequently made at unequal levels of thickness.
Failings in the factories quality control meant that some of these faulty columns had been used for the bridge. The Enquiry ruled that the strain on these substandard bridge parts coupled with the failure in the bridge’s design to allow for high winds, contributed to the disaster.