Investigating nineteenth century dock construction disasters Available to Purchase

After a brief consideration of the special problems facing nineteenth century dock engineers, the paper moves on to examine the importance of the managerial problems they had to confront. These could cause financial or physical disasters and could hinder or even prevent investigation of their causes. At a micro-level, mistakes were investigated and remedial measures adopted only for the mistakes to be repeated. There were only two dock construction accidents (excluding one on the Manchester Ship Canal) in the period considered, at Birkenhead and Newport, but both caused deaths in double figures. Both involved the failure of large temporary timber structures and the worse of the two occurred just 4 months after the first had passed effectively un-investigated. The inquiry into the second showed that the principal cause in each case was senior management delegating crucial decisions to semi-skilled men. The forms of inquiry employed seem archaic, but in fact they generally succeeded in providing explanations in cases where explanations were genuinely wanted. Furthermore, on the main project at Liverpool docks, which was in hand at the time of the Newport inquiry, the accident rate was remarkably low.