The Meikle Ferry had connected the northern and southern shores of the Dornoch Firth since at least 1560, when it first appears in historical records. In the early 19th century, the ferry was a large boat capable of carrying carriages, horses, and cattle, with a smaller yawl available for foot passengers. Cattle were encouraged to swim alongside, though reluctant animals were sometimes loaded aboard. On the day of the disaster, more than 111 people boarded the ferry. As many as forty others were turned away -- partly at the urging of Sheriff Donald McCulloch of Dornoch -- but even after the refusals, the boat sat dangerously low in the water. Some accounts claimed that drunk ferrymen had encouraged the overloading.

Shortly after leaving the slipway, the overloaded ferry came broadside to the tidal current. Waves washed over the gunwales and the boat began taking on water rapidly. Panic swept through the crowded passengers as the vessel capsized. Of the 111 people aboard, only twelve were pulled from the water alive -- four men and eight women. The other ninety-nine perished: forty-three men and boys, fifty-six women and girls. Twenty of the dead were unmarried young men; thirty-eight were unmarried young women. Among the drowned was Sheriff McCulloch himself, the man who had tried to limit the numbers. A memorial stone was later erected in Dornoch in his memory.

The dead came from across the region, and their loss was felt in every parish. Fifty-six belonged to Dornoch, twenty-four to Creich, ten to Golspie, seven to Rogart, and two to Lairg. Initial newspaper accounts reported as many as 156 dead before the toll was revised downward. In a region of small, close-knit communities, the loss of nearly a hundred people in a single afternoon was catastrophic. Families lost multiple members. Households lost their breadwinners. The grief radiated outward from the shores of the firth into the surrounding glens and villages, where the names of the dead were known to everyone.

The disaster's most lasting consequence was infrastructure. The ferry crossing at Meikle Ferry had always been precarious -- tidal, weather-dependent, and served by boats of questionable quality. After ninety-nine people died in clear weather on a routine crossing, the case for a fixed bridge became unanswerable. The disaster prompted the construction of a bridge upriver at Bonar Bridge, permanently connecting the communities that the ferry had linked so unreliably. Today, the Dornoch Firth is spanned by a modern road bridge, and the old Meikle Ferry slipway on the northern shore is a quiet, grassy place. Little remains to mark the spot where so many died, save the landscape itself -- the tidal waters, the broad firth, and the distance between two shores that once cost a hundred lives to cross.