|
The Gillingham bus disaster occurred outside Chatham Dockyard, Kent〔The borders between the Medway Towns are fairly fluid. Although maps generally show Dock Road as being in Chatham, the newspapers of the time almost always reported the accident as occurring in Gillingham, and this is the name by which it is usually known.〕 on the evening of 4 December 1951. A double-decker bus ploughed into a company of fifty-two young members of the Royal Marines Volunteer Cadet Corps,〔The RMVCC is now the Chatham Marine Cadet Unit〕 aged between nine and thirteen. 24 cadets were killed and 18 injured; at the time it was the highest loss of life in any road accident in British history. ==The accident== The company was marching from Melville Royal Marine Barracks, Gillingham, to the Royal Naval Barracks, Chatham, to attend a boxing tournament. It was divided into three platoons; the rear platoon consisted of new recruits who had not yet received uniforms. They were generally under the command of cadet non-commissioned officers (NCOs); the only adult present was the contingent adjutant, Lieutenant Clarence Murrayfield Carter, a regular Royal Marines officer. The column was about fifteen yards long and was marching three abreast on the left-hand side of the road. It was showing no lights, there being no official requirement to do so, and the boys in uniform were wearing Royal Marines standard-issue dark blue battledress and berets, although they had white belts and white lanyards on their shoulders. The cadets left Melville Barracks at about 5.40 pm. At about 5.57 or 5.58 pm the column was marching down Dock Road, just past the gates of the Chatham Royal Naval Dockyard. The street lighting was very poor and it was allegedly a very dark/foggy night (although Carter denied this). As the column passed the municipal swimming pool, a particularly dark part of the street (since a street lamp had failed), it was hit from behind by a bus belonging to the Chatham & District Traction Company. The bus was allegedly travelling at 15–20 miles per hour, although Carter and another witness estimated its speed as 40–45 miles per hour. The bus driver, John William George Samson, 57, had worked for the company for forty years, twenty-five of them as a driver. He was very familiar with the route. He had his sidelights on, but not his headlights; this was perfectly legal and considered to be normal practice at the time.〔It was not made compulsory to show headlights after dark in Britain until the 1970s – in fact, many experts thought it was dangerous to show headlights where there was any form of street lighting as they could dazzle oncoming drivers.〕 Other bus drivers said that they were using headlights that night and in that location as it was particularly dark. Other drivers defended Samson's decision not to use his headlights. Lieutenant Carter, who was moving up and down the flanks of the column, told the inquest that he saw the bus coming and told the boys to move into the kerb as far as they could, assuming the bus would move around them. Samson told the inquest that he did not see the cadets at all and was only aware he had driven into something when the bus started to wobble as though it "had run over a lot of loose stones or something", although it was also reported that he felt bumps and heard the high-pitched screams of the cadets. At that point he braked immediately. His conductress, Dorothy Dunster, called out "What's happened?", and Samson got out to see what had happened. Carter, who was knocked over and dazed but not injured, said the bus continued about fifty yards before braking and another witness said he thought about twenty-five yards. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gillingham bus disaster」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|