Paisley pub on site of Britain’s worst canal disaster to honour victims

It is believed to have been Britain’s worst canal disaster, in which 85 people, most of them children, died when a pleasure boat capsized just days after the waterway opened.
Amy Szuster, assistant manager, outside the Canal Station Bar & Restaurant. Picture: John DevlinAmy Szuster, assistant manager, outside the Canal Station Bar & Restaurant. Picture: John Devlin
Amy Szuster, assistant manager, outside the Canal Station Bar & Restaurant. Picture: John Devlin

But there is nothing to mark the horrific incident at the site of the canal basin in Paisley.

Now staff at an adjacent bar plan to put up a memorial to the tragedy nearly 210 years after one of the town’s darkest days.

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It happened as crowds flocked to sail on the first section of the Glasgow-Paisley-Ardrossan canal, opened four days earlier in November 1810.

As passengers on the fully-loaded Countess of Eglinton boat from Johnstone crowded to one side to get ashore, others waiting to board rushed forward to get a space.

The boatman is reported to have moved the vessel away from the side to stop any more people jumping on, but it became top-heavy and capsized, with more than 100 being thrown into the water.

According to accounts, the canal was only about 6ft deep, but few of those in the water could swim and they were further encumbered by heavy winter clothing and the steep sides of the basin.

Among the children who died were several infants, one of them just six months old.

Workers at the Canal Station Bar & Restaurant, which occupies the former canal station on a rail line built over the waterway, want to put up a plaque to commemorate the disaster after a previous one went missing.

They have been spurred on by the unveiling on Friday of a Red Wheel plaque by the Transport Trust – the first in Scotland – to mark the building of the canal and the subsequent rail line.

Amy Szuster, the bar’s assistant manager, said: “There are plans to replace the plaque commemorating those lost in November 1810.

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“It is early days, however plans will soon be developing.The canal disaster is a huge part of Paisley’s history and probably Britain’s worst canal disaster. It would only be right to commemorate those lives lost over 200 years ago.

“It’s a really good idea to commemorate the event where it happened.”

William Cross, a writer and historian who runs a website about the disaster, said: “The death roll was a tragedy for many more folk as most victims were young people and some breadwinners.

“We must remember them, especially to inform the present generation of the very great sorrow there was in the town and district in past days.

“What was especially sad about the accident was it happened on Martinmas Fair, a holiday when people were out in numbers to enjoy themselves and have fun.

”Their working lives then were long hours for poor wages, and some of the more zealous of the passengers were no doubt a bit merry.”

John Yellowlees, who helped organise the Red Wheel unveiling, said it honoured the canal, which was constructed by Thomas Telford with the longest aqueduct span during the original canal-building age – Blackhall bridge.

The plaque also marks its conversion to a railway in 1885, which closed in 1983 before partially re-opening in 1990, with a new Paisley Canal station sited just east of the original.

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The rest, including the stretch where the disaster happened, is now part of the national cycle network.

Yellowlees said: “The disaster is part of Paisley’s transport heritage so it would be good to see further commemoration of it.”