No satisfactory conclusion can now be arrived at upon any of these points, though the probabilities are that with the appliances since introduced the train might have been stopped in time. In this case, as in that at Claybridge, the coroner's jury returned a verdict exonerating every one concerned from responsibility, and very possibly they were justified in so doing; though it is extremely questionable whether Captain Tyler would have arrived at a similar conclusion. There is a strong probability that the investigation went off, so to speak, on a wholly false issue,—turned on the draw-bridge frenzy instead of upon the question of care. So far as the verdict declared that the disaster was due to a collision between a passenger train and a derailed oil car, and not to the existence of a draw in the bridge on which it happened to occur, it was, indeed, entitled to respect, and yet it was on this very point that it excited the most criticism. Loud commendation was heard through the press of the Connecticut law, which had been in force for twenty years, and, indeed, still is in force there, under which all trains are compelled to come to a full stop before entering on any bridge which has a draw in it,—a law which may best be described as a useless nuisance. Yet the grand jury of the Court of Oyer and Terminer of New York city even went so far as to recommend, in a report made by it on the 23d of February, 1871,—sixteen days after the accident,—the passage by the legislature then in session at Albany of a similar legal absurdity. Fortunately better counsels prevailed, and, as the public recovered its equilibrium, the matter was allowed to drop.

The Connecticut law in question, however, originated in an accident which at the time had startled and shocked the community as much even as that at Versailles did before or that at Abergele has since done. It occurred to an express train on the New York & New Haven road at Norwalk, in Connecticut, on the 6th of May, 1853.

CHAPTER X.

THE NORWALK ACCIDENT.

The railroad at Norwalk crosses a small inlet of Long Island Sound by means of a draw-bridge, which is approached from the direction of New York around a sharp curve. A ball at the mast-head was in 1853 the signal that the draw was open and the bridge closed to the passage of trains. The express passenger train for Boston, consisting of a locomotive and two baggage and five passenger cars, containing about one hundred and fifty persons, left New York as usual at eight o'clock that morning. The locomotive was not in charge of its usual engine-driver but of a substitute named Tucker; a man who some seven years before had been injured in a previous collision on the same road, for which he did not appear to have been in any way responsible, but who had then given up his position and gone to California, whence he had recently returned and was now again an applicant for an engineer's situation. This was his third trip over the road, as substitute. In approaching the bridge at Norwalk he apparently wholly neglected to look for the draw-signal. He was running his train at about the usual rate of speed, and first became aware that the draw was open when within four hundred feet of it and after it had become wholly impossible to stop the train in time. He immediately whistled for brakes and reversed his engine, and then, without setting the brake on his tender, both he and the fireman sprang off and escaped with trifling injuries. The train at this time did not appear to be moving at a speed of over fifteen miles an hour. The draw was sixty feet in width; the water in the then state of the tide was about twelve feet deep, and the same distance below the level of the bridge. Although the speed of the train had been materially reduced, yet when it came to the opening it was still moving with sufficient impetus to send its locomotive clean across the sixty foot interval and to cause it to strike the opposite abutment about eight feet below the track; it then fell heavily to the bottom. The tender lodged on top of the locomotive, bottom up and resting against the pier, while on top of this again was the first baggage car. The second baggage car, which contained also a compartment for smokers, followed, but in falling was canted over to the north side of the draw in such a way as not to be wholly submerged, so that most of those in it were saved. The first passenger car next plunged into the opening; its forward end crushed in, as it fell against the baggage car in front of it, while its rear end dropped into the deep water below; and on top of it came the second passenger car, burying the passengers in the first beneath the débris, and itself partially submerged. The succeeding or third passenger car, instead of following the others, broke in two in the middle, the forward part hanging down over the edge of the draw, while the rear of it rested on the track and stayed the course of the remainder of the train. Including those in the smoking compartment more than a hundred persons were plunged into the channel, of whom forty-six lost their lives, while some thirty others were more or less severely injured. The killed were mainly among the passengers in the first car; for, in falling, the roof of the second car was split open, and it finally rested in such a position that, as no succeeding car came on top of it, many of those in it were enabled to extricate themselves; indeed, more than one of the passengers in falling were absolutely thrown through the aperture in the roof, and, without any volition on their part, were saved with unmoistened garments.

Shocking as this catastrophe was, it was eclipsed in horror by another exactly similar in character, though from the peculiar circumstances of the case it excited far less public notice, which occurred eleven years later on the Grand Trunk railway of Canada. In this case a large party of emigrants, over 500 in number and chiefly Poles, Germans and Norwegians of the better class, had landed at Quebec and were being forwarded on a special train to their destination in the West. With their baggage they filled thirteen cars. The Grand Trunk on the way to Montreal crosses the Richelieu river at Belœil by an iron bridge, in the westernmost span of which was a draw over the canal, some 45 feet below it. Both by law and under the running rules of the road all trains were to come to a dead stand on approaching the bridge, and to proceed only when the safety signal was clearly discerned. This rule, however, as it appeared at the subsequent inquest, had been systematically disobeyed, it having been considered sufficient if the train was "slowed down." In the present case, however—the night of June 29, 1864,—though the danger signal was displayed and in full sight for a distance of 1,600 feet, the engine-driver, unfamiliar with the road and its signals, failed to see it, and, without slowing his train even, ran directly onto the bridge. He became aware of the danger when too late to stop. The draw was open to permit the passage of a steamer with six barges in tow, one of which was directly under the opening. The whole train went through the draw, sinking the barge and piling itself up in the water on top of it. The three last cars, falling on the accumulated wreck, toppled over upon the west embankment and were thus less injured than the others. The details of the accident were singularly distressing. "As soon as possible a strong cable was attached to the upper part of the piling, and by this means two cars, the last of the ill-fated train, were dragged onto the wharf under the bridge. Their removal revealed a horrible sight. A shapeless blue mass of hands and heads and feet protruded among the splinters and frame-work, and gradually resolved itself into a closely-packed mass of human beings, all ragged and bloody and dinted from crown to foot with blue bruises and weals and cuts inflicted by the ponderous iron work, the splinters and the enormous weight of the train. * * * A great many of the dead had evidently been asleep; the majority of them had taken off their boots and coats in the endeavor to make themselves as comfortable as possible. They lay heaped upon one another like sacks, dressed in the traditional blue clothing of the German people. * * * A child was got at and removed nine hours after the accident, being uninjured in its dead mother's arms."

The accident happened at 2 A.M., and before sundown of the next day 86 bodies had been taken out of the canal; others were subsequently recovered, and yet more died from their hurts. The injured were numbered by hundreds. It was altogether a disaster of the most appalling description, in extenuation of which nothing was to be said. It befell, however, a body of comparatively friendless emigrants, and excited not a tithe of the painful interest which yet attaches to the similar accident to the Boston express at Norwalk.