Qualla: Paisley Canal Disaster

Paisley Canal Disaster: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It cost eight pence to ride the Countess of Eglinton, and that was the whole point. For ordinary working families in Paisley and Glasgow - the kind of families who rarely had a day to spare and even more rarely a coin to spend on something that wasn't food or rent - a few hours on a canal boat between the two towns was a rare gift. The boat had only been operating for about a week when, on Saturday 10 November 1810, the weather turned warm enough to feel like summer in November. Families came to the dock dressed for the occasion: parents, grandparents, children, babies. They waited their turn. Most never got on the boat. By the end of the afternoon, 84 of them - 66 under the age of twenty, 18 under the age of ten - were dead.

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Paisley Canal Disaster: The Day Out

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Glasgow, Paisley and Johnstone Canal had been built to carry goods, but the Countess of Eglinton was something new - a 59.5-foot vessel converted for holiday day trips, run from a dock belonging to a Mr Barclay in Paisley. In the seven days since the service began it had beco...

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Paisley Canal Disaster: The Moment It Went Wrong

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Crowd disasters share a terrible architecture. They are almost always caused not by malice but by the rear of a crowd not knowing what the front already knows. As the previous load of passengers tried to disembark from one end of the Countess of Eglinton, the waiting crowd at the...

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Paisley Canal Disaster: Who They Were

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The numbers do not soften with repetition. Sixty-six victims were under the age of twenty. Eighteen were under the age of ten. These were not seasoned travellers or wealthy tourists. They were children whose parents had saved eight pence apiece to give them an afternoon out - the...

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Paisley Canal Disaster: Plaques and a Forgotten Wound

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For most of two centuries the disaster was barely remembered outside Paisley. There is no national monument. There is no canal anymore - the basin where the Countess of Eglinton lay overturned was filled in long ago, and a railway station, Paisley Canal, now stands nearby. Two sm...

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