Found at Sea

At around 7:15 pm on 28 December 1879 the Tay Bridge collapsed, taking a train with it and seventy-five people to their deaths. At the time of completion, the first Tay Bridge was the longest in the world at nearly two miles long.

Around five months after the Tay Bridge disaster, James Storey the brother of my 3x Great Grandfather, Adam made quite a discovery out at sea.

__________

PART OF THE TAY BRIDGE PICKED UP NEAR NEWBIGGIN. - At an early hour one morning last week as James Storey, a fishermen, of Newbiggin, and William Armstrong, a young man belonging to the same place, were proceeding in their coble to Cresswell Rocks, in order to draw their crab pots, they observed something floating in the sea to the south of Cresswell. After performing their work, and when about two miles to the north of Newbiggin, at seven o'clock in the morning, Newbiggin point at that time bearing south-west, they overtook and took in tow what appeared to be an ordinary balk of timber; but they soon found that it was very heavy, and after a great deal of laborious rowing, they landed it at Newbiggin at about half-past ten o'clock in the morning. The timber, which was covered with slime and mud appeared to have been embedded somewhere for a long time; and as Mr Storey was in the act of scraping it off with his knife, to his surprise he discovered that on one side of it there was a long piece of railway track, as well as two shorter pieces, which appeared to have been wrenched and broken. There can be no doubt that the log of fir or pitch pine - which is 20 feet long and 15 inches square, and to which there is a broken piece 5 feet long, fastened with an iron screw bolt about 2 feet 6 inches long, which is very much bent and twisted, and at the other end of the log there is also a bolt of the same length - forms part of the ill-fated Tay Bridge, which was blown down on the night of the 28th of December last.
__________
- From the Dundee Evening Telegraph, 24 May 1880.

References

Tom Martin's Tay Bridge Disaster Web Pages