The Birkenhead Dock Disaster was a tragedy

Tragedy (event)

A tragedy is an event in which one or more losses, usually of human life, occurs that is viewed as mournful. Such an event is said to be tragic....

 that happened when a temporary dam

Dam

A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...

 collapsed during construction of the Vittoria Dock

Vittoria Dock

Vittoria Dock is a dock in Birkenhead, Wirral Peninsula, England. It was built between 1905 and 1909 within the Great Float.-The name 'Vittoria':The dock is named after the Battle of Vittoria, fought on 21 June 1813 and was designed by A.G.Lyster....

 in Birkenhead

Birkenhead

Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...

, Wirral Peninsula

Wirral Peninsula

Wirral or the Wirral is a peninsula in North West England. It is bounded by three bodies of water: to the west by the River Dee, forming a boundary with Wales, to the east by the River Mersey and to the north by the Irish Sea. Both terms "Wirral" and "the Wirral" are used locally , although the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, on March 6, 1909. It left 14 workers (or "navvies") dead and three injured. The disaster led to a huge public outpouring of sympathy and grief in the local area. However, the Government refused to hold a public inquiry

Public inquiry

A Tribunal of Inquiry is an official review of events or actions ordered by a government body in Common Law countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland or Canada. Such a public inquiry differs from a Royal Commission in that a public inquiry accepts evidence and conducts its hearings in a more...

 and the cause of the disaster was never definitively established. Very little evidence or documentation surrounding the event now exists.

Building the Vittoria Dock

The £206,000 contract to build a dock on the Vittoria Wharf area of Birkenhead was awarded by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board in 1905 to John Scott of Darlington. Scott was the son of Sir Walter Scott

Walter Scott (1st Baronet of Beauclerc)

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet of Beauclerc was an English building contractor and publisher. Based in Newcastle upon Tyne, Scott began his profession as a mason, before setting up his own building firm, completing many major architectural projects in the North East of England and notable railway...

 (1826-1910), one of the greatest regional civil engineering

Civil engineering

Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...

 contractors of his era, and had recently built an extension to the docks in Middlesbrough

Middlesbrough

Middlesbrough is a large town situated on the south bank of the River Tees in north east England, that sits within the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire...

.
The Vittoria Dock - sited at the northern end of Vittoria Street - was to serve as an accessible, organised berthing facility for vessels, which were increasing in size.
Work began in 1905 and was due to be finished by the end of 1909. However, by March 1909 it was nine months ahead of schedule. The whole project was merely a few hours from completion when the disaster occurred.

Disaster Strikes

Just after midnight on 6 March 1909, during a blinding snowstorm, disaster struck. A gang of navvies were working in a 45 feet (13.7 m) which formed the entrance channel to the new dock. They were clearing away rubble and timber, which was hauled up to the dockside by a crane which straddled the excavation. The waters of the neighbouring East Float

Great Float

The Great Float, is a body of water on the Wirral Peninsula, England formed from the natural tidal inlet, the Wallasey Pool. It is split into two large docks, East Float and West Float, both part of the Birkenhead Docks complex. The docks run approximately inland from the River Mersey, dividing...

 were held back from the entrance channel by a 200 feet (61 m) temporary coffer dam, formed from pilings rammed with mud and cement, which had been built in 1907. There was only a small amount of work left to do, and the whole four-year dock project would be finished by the following evening.

At around 12:20 am—just after high tide—the dam collapsed without warning, sending millions of gallons of water and hundreds of tons of timber and mud crashing down on to the men working in the pit. Fourteen were killed, but one survived by being shot to the surface. Two men working on the crane were injured as it collapsed into the flooded pit, one losing a leg. The disaster widowed seven women and left 13 children fatherless. It took a month for divers to recover all the bodies, and the victims were buried in three mass graves in Flaybrick Hill Cemetery

Flaybrick Hill Cemetery

Flaybrick Hill Cemetery was a municipal cemetery situated in Birkenhead, on the Wirral Peninsula, England. It has been designated a conservation area by Wirral Borough Council, who own the site....

, Birkenhead, now known as Flaybrick Memorial Gardens.

Aftermath

At the ensuing inquest, John Scott's chief engineer claimed that the disaster was probably caused when the base of the coffer dam shifted after pilings from the old dock wall were removed, and this event could not have been foreseen. However, this explanation was never independently tested or verified. One man - John Jones, the operator of the piledriving machine used to build the dam - bravely spoke out at the inquest, claiming there had been shoddy workmanship and rotten building materials had been used on the project. But his evidence was disregarded and the jury, heavily influenced by the coroner's summing-up, returned a verdict was that no one was to blame. The Vittoria Dock opened for business four months after the disaster and is still in operation today.

Further reading

• Damburst, by Tom McCarthy (Countyvise, 2006). ISBN 1901231747 ISBN 978-1901231748