3-052-363 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Tay Bridge Disaster: boats assisting in the search, 1880. 'The wreckage brought up consists mostly of planks and beams from the permanent way of the railroad, or floor of the bridge, and even these, thick timbers are very much broken up. Yet a few such little things as a lamp, a foot-warmer, a piece of a window-blind or panel, an overcoat, an umbrella, a slipper, or a handkerchief, were got out of the wreck. Since last Saturday, a number of the local fishing-boats, as well as a dozen whale-boats, fully manned and equipped with grapnels and ropes, have been occupied in trawling the bottom of the firth, some distance below the bridge. They found on Monday the body of David Johnstone, railway guard, deeply embedded in the sand, about half a mile from the bridge... The loss of fives is now reckoned at seventy-five, not one person in the train having the slightest chance of escape'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.