either in the derailment or during the rescue operation. The Board of Trade report, published on 21 June 1865, found that for the previous eight to ten weeks a team of eight men and a foreman had been renewing the timbers under the track on viaducts between Headcorn and Staplehurst railway stations. The track would be removed when no train was due. However, on 9 June the foreman, John or Henry Benge, had misread his timetable as to the schedule that day of the tidal boat train, which ran at a different time depending on the tide in the English Channel. Regulations required a man with a red flag to be away, but the labourer was only away, having counted telegraph poles that were unusually close together, and the train had insufficient time to stop. There had also been no notification to the driver about the track repairs in the area. Benge was subsequently tried for manslaughter. Witnesses The accident had several witnesses. One described the derailment as "two terrible jolts and in an instant ... all became darkness ... and chaos". Another reported trapped bodies inside the wreckage, hearing "the groans of the dying and wounded, the shrieks of frantic ladies and the shrill cries of young children". Charles Dickens was with his mistress Ellen Ternan and her mother, Frances Ternan, in the first-class carriage which did not completely fall into the river bed and survived the derailment. He climbed out of the compartment through the window, rescued the Ternans and, with his flask of brandy and his hat full of water, tended to the victims, some of whom died while he was with them. Before he left with other survivors in an emergency train to London, he retrieved the manuscript of the episode of Our Mutual Friend that he was working on. Although several passengers recognised Dickens, he did not make himself known to the South Eastern Railway, possibly because he did not want publicity about his mistress. The directors of the South Eastern Railway presented him with a piece of plate as a token of their appreciation for his assistance in the aftermath of the accident. The experience affected Dickens greatly; he lost his voice for two weeks and was two and a half pages short for the sixteenth episode of Our Mutual Friend, published in August 1865. Dickens acknowledged the incident in the novel's postscript: On