An investigation into the accident, which killed 226 people, blamed the storm, the corrosion of the bridge’s anchors and the soldiers’ synchronous stepping. One of the 11-year-old structure’s cast-iron towers collapsed on the soldiers, and the deck plummeted into the river below. High winds, combined with the force of the soldiers’ rhythmic steps, caused the 335-foot-long suspension bridge to sway severely, snapping its wire cables. An imperfectly welded joint was blamed for the collapse, which killed 79 people, including 59 children, some as young as two.Īs a thunderstorm lashed Angers, France, on April 16, 1850, a battalion of nearly 500 French soldiers struggled to stay upright as it marched across the Basse-Chaîne Bridge spanning the Maine River. As the deck turned perpendicular, children were crushed against the parapet railing before the deck fell into the river. The sudden weight change caused the bridge’s chains to snap. As Nelson passed beneath the bridge, which opened in 1829, the onlookers suddenly shifted from one side of it to the other to keep watching the clown’s journey. Despite rainfall, several thousand spectators lined the riverbanks, and hundreds more-including many children-crowded the suspension bridge spanning the river to view the spectacle. To promote the arrival of William Cooke’s Circus, clown Arthur Nelson planned to ride the River Bure’s flood tide in a washtub drawn by four geese. Merriment suddenly turned to horror in the English city of Great Yarmouth on the afternoon of May 2, 1845. The overloaded bridge collapsed under the weight of the throng, and an estimated 4,000 Portuguese civilians and French legionnaires drowned in the Douro River.
While the First Battle of Porto raged on March 29, 1809, thousands of civilians attempted to flee a bayonet charge by the French imperial army by crossing the Ponte das Barcas, a pontoon bridge constructed in 1806 by linking some 20 boats together with steel cables.
History’s deadliest bridge collapse occurred during the Peninsular War as the forces of Napoleon attacked the Portuguese city of Porto. These seven collapses are among history’s deadliest bridge disasters. Although bridges are among history’s greatest feats of engineering-andin rare cases they have unexpectedly and catastrophically failed due to structural deficiencies, weather conditions or too much weight.
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