Porto Boat Bridge disaster

[2][1] The Portuguese cavalry, forced in retreat to the riverside, added to the disaster: people were killed by the cavalrymen's swords as they attempted to clear a path to the bridge; others were trampled under their horses.

[3] Still more people were killed by artillery fire from French troops on the Porto riverbank and from Portuguese soldiers who were occupying a defensive position above the south, Gaia, side of the bridge.

French troops commanded by Marshall Soult crossed Portugal's northern border with a view to taking Porto and then proceedings south to Lisbon.

[4] A memorial painting, in oils on copper, showing the disaster was originally exhibited as part of a shrine on the Porto Ribeira (riverside) at the site of the bridge.

It was replaced at the shrine on the Ribeira (known as the Altar of the Alminhas da Ponte, "Poor Souls of the Bridge") by an 1897 piece in bronze by the sculptor José Joaquim Teixeira Lopes.

[12] The column, slowly built between 1909 and 1951, was a project by the celebrated Porto architect José Marques da Silva and the sculptor Alves de Sousa.

He inaugurated a new sculpture consisting of steel elements marking the point where the cables of the Ponte das Barcas joined the Porto and Gaia riversides.

View of the city of Porto and Ponte das Barcas (restored after the disaster) from the Vila Nova de Gaia riverside, Henry L'Eveque, 1817
Carlos Amarante , designer of the 1806 Ponte das Barcas, the bridge involved in the disaster.
2013 Image of the Porto riverside showing a dark steel sculpture jutting over the river from the edge of the riverbank. Installed in 2009, the sculpture marks the point where the cables of the 1806 Ponte das Barcas attached to the quay.