English: Bouch was the chief engineer of the North British Railway Company, whose greatest achievement turned out to be his greatest failure. As the designer of the ill-fated Tay Bridge, he was inevitably blamed by the Board of Trade Inquiry into the disaster, although there were strong suspicions that shoddy workmanship at the Wormit Foundry, where the iron girders were manufactured, may have been more responsible. Broken in spirit, the man who had been knighted in recognition of his feat in building the world's longest bridge, became a recluse and died only four months after the Inquiry reported.