Bensham Tram Crash of 1916 (NZ246619)

(image from the iSeeGateshead website)

Private Edward Hutchinson was one of the many who dutifully joined up (with the Durham Light Infantry) during the First World War – doing so in mid-September 1914. In April 1915 his battalion was posted overseas, where he fought in (and survived) the Second Battle of Ypres. Returning home due to sickness or injury, he found himself in the Gateshead suburb of Bensham in early 1916.

Despite his major scrape with death in the trenches, Hutchinson had the ironic misfortune to find himself crushed to death under a runaway tram one chilly winter’s evening, in what became known as the Bensham Tram Crash of 5^th February 1916.

The vehicle in question was travelling up Bensham Bank, having just passed the junction with Saltwell Road, when the driver, 20-year-old motorman Leonard Jane, applied his brakes and left his tram to assist a colleague in an oncoming vehicle who had had to deal with a fight. In his absence, the half-full car filled with several more passengers and the extra weight caused it to trundle slowly backwards. On meeting the junction with Saltwell Road, it turned sharply and its momentum caused it to topple over.

All on-board survived (though there were several injuries, including a couple of broken legs), but the four pedestrians trapped under the hulk of the falling tram were all killed – among them our WWI veteran. The other three were all members of the Morrell family – a father, mother and a boy of seven. The distraught motorman was later acquitted of manslaughter.

Strangely, Gateshead tramcar No.7 was later repaired and pressed back into service – and it now enjoys a new lease of life at the National Tramway Museum in Derbyshire.  

Vulcan Over Wingate (NZ403372)

On 7^th January 1971, in broad daylight, an Avro Vulcan XM610 Bomber soared across the skies of the North-East before crashing into a field near Wingate in Co.Durham.  There was no loss of life, but the incident has entered local folklore – being especially vivid in the memories of those children of the local junior school who were staring up at the roaring aircraft as it fell to earth yards from their playground.

It all started as a routine practise sortie across the North Sea and the rural reaches of the Borders, until metal fatigue in one of the engines sent the warplane and its five-man crew into panic stations.  As Captain Bob Alcock ordered his crew to eject one by one, he wrestled with the controls with ever-increasing desperation – but all to no avail, the Vulcan giving up the ghost as it careered across Northumberland and East Durham.

Alcock directed the aircraft sea-ward and ejected.  Unfortunately, the Vulcan had other ideas and dipped downwards, smashing deep into a farmer’s field between Wingate and Station Town – 100 yards from the aforementioned school.  For their attempts to save the plane, and their efforts to steer it clear of settlements, the crew all received awards – Alcock gaining the Air Force Cross.

More detail can be found at www.neam.co.uk/wingate.html, with some interesting comment at www.seaham.org.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=232 .  Eye-witness accounts seem to vary slightly, and doubts have been cast upon the pilot’s alleged attempts to steer the plane to a ‘safe’ crash.

An interesting piece of recent history.