The Great Bridge (47 page)

There was a break for the noon meal. The day was bright and very hot by then. Up on the Brooklyn tower, a small crowd of privileged spectators had gathered, including Senator Murphy and several ladies. The sun beat down on the exposed stonework and at one point some of the reporters in the group sent a note over the rope to their compatriots on the opposite tower asking for cold beer and sandwiches. An answer was returned by the same route, “Send the money and we will send the beer,” but no money was sent.

Presently, about twenty past one, the huge American flag was again unfurled from the Brooklyn tower and minutes later another went up the flagstaff on the New York tower. Then two men with red signal flags were seen to wave to each other from the tops of either tower. Everything was set to go. Estimates were that more than ten thousand people were watching.

Farrington, all this time, had been supervising the preparation of his boatswain’s chair, a simple board seat, two feet long and two inches thick, with rope holes drilled in each corner, like an ordinary swing, and with four ropes drawn through and tied to the wire rope just as they might be for a swing. The board itself had been placed so that only one end rested on the rim of the anchorage, while most of it hung out over the edge, eighty feet above the street. So when Farrington proceeded to take his seat, it was, in the words of one bystander, a somewhat delicate operation.

The men assisting him next passed a rope across his back, to form a rest of sorts, then brought it around, across his chest, and tied it securely to one of the corner ropes. All these precautions, however, appeared to make “the daring voyager” feel only more uncomfortable.

At thirty-two minutes past one o’clock, Farrington said he was ready. “Timothy McCarthy ran the engine,” Farrington would write later, “and John D. Smallfield handled the starting lever most carefully, according to a system of signals previously agreed upon.” Martin, who was standing close by, dipped a signal flag, John D. Smallfield in the yard below shifted his lever, and in an instant the master mechanic was on his way.

There was great shouting from down below, and up ahead, on top of the tower, people were waving hats and handkerchiefs. Then all at once, as he went swinging out over the housetops between the anchorage and the tower, Farrington freed himself from the rope about his chest and stood up on the seat. Holding on first with one hand, then the other, he lifted his hat in response to the continuing ovation. Then he sat down again. People were running through the streets beneath him now, shouting and cheering as they ran. He waved, he blew them kisses. Sailing steadily along all the while, his course was nearly horizontal at first, like that of a heavy bird taking flight, because of the sag in the rope. His light coat blew open and began fluttering in the wind. And then he was beyond the sag and climbing sharply, almost straight up, a coat-flapping, gently twirling form that looked very small, fragile, and very birdlike now against the granite face of the tower.

The rope had to be operated with the greatest of care at this stage, as Farrington neared the top of the tower, for if he were drawn suddenly against the coping, he might be knocked right out of his seat. A reporter described the moment this way:

A tremendous cheer went up from the streets and rooftops, followed quickly by a salute from the little cannon across the river. His time from anchorage to tower was three and three-quarter minutes. (Quite a number of those gentlemen with privileged vantage points on the towers and anchorages had their watches out through the whole of Farrington’s aerial journey and the time he took from point to point would be a subject of the greatest interest among them and duly noted for the historical record.)

Farrington told those clustered about him on the Brooklyn tower that the trip thus far had been nothing at all. Murphy shook him heartily by the hand and asked how he felt. It was an exhilarating moment for the Senator. Farrington said he felt just fine.

The little sling seat was then carried across to the opposite rim and Farrington climbed down and seated himself once again for the long ride over the river. The rope he was traveling on did not look very big even up close. It was about as thick as a man’s thumb. But to those who stood with him at the tower’s edge, the rope appeared to trail off to no more than a thread, then to vanish altogether somewhere out beyond the middle of the river. It was all very well to know its tensile strength and the rest (it could carry the weight of ten men and more). Every instinct was still to pull back and shudder at the prospect of stepping off into such a void.

Again the signal flag waved and the rope started and the minute he swung away from the tower there was another outburst of cheering. This time all those crowded along the wharves were joined by thousands more on board the innumerable boats and ferries that had gathered for the occasion. All normal traffic on the river had stopped. From the towers it looked almost as though one could walk across just by stepping from boat to boat.

Farrington went sailing over the river, waving, lifting his hat, very obviously having a glorious time, but he stayed seated. Then a steam tug directly beneath him let loose with its shrill whistle. Instantly a dozen others joined in. In seconds every boat on the river was sounding its approval as the tiny figure of a man went soaring overhead, “to all appearances self-propelled,” spinning around every now and then, the rope he dangled from all but invisible against the sky.

As he passed the center of the river and began his ascent to the New York tower, the reception from shore was louder even than his Brooklyn send-off had been. And a little less than seven minutes after leaving the Brooklyn tower, he made a flawless landing on top of the New York tower. Then with no delay whatever he was across the summit of the tower, back in his seat again, and on his way on the last leg of the trip, down to the New York anchorage.

Now the great mass of spectators along the river front surged inland toward the anchorage. Church bells were ringing, factory whistles screaming, along with all the boat horns, bells, and whistles that were still sounding forth from the water—“a perfect pandemonium” the
Times
called it. Indeed, Master Mechanic Farrington seemed the only one not carried away by the moment. It was as though he might be having second thoughts about the commotion he was causing, or that he was sorry the ride was over. “Despite the shouting and confusion that went on beneath him,” wrote one onlooker, “he sat quiet with his hands folded, save when he waved them in response and showed every sign of perfect self-possession.”

Then Farrington stepped lightly onto the New York anchorage, the first passenger to cross over from Brooklyn by way of the Great Bridge. The entire trip had taken twenty-two minutes.

After that, when Farrington climbed down from the anchorage, something close to a riot broke out. The crowd wanted to carry him through the streets in triumph. At first he had tried to make his way through, thinking naïvely that he could walk over to the ferry back to Brooklyn, but people were pressing about him so, reaching out to touch him with such fervor, that he was “obliged to seek refuge from their attentions” in an office in the bridge yard. The hope was that things might settle down if he kept out of sight. But an hour later the crowds had grown greater if anything. A rowboat was brought to the wharf under the tower. Farrington slipped out a back door and was rowed to the other side.

Farrington declared afterward, “The ride gave me a magnificent view, and such pleasing sensations as probably I shall never experience again. But he thought much too much fuss had been made over the episode and told Roebling he was quite put out by the publicity he had received. He had had a natural desire to be the first man over, he said, but his real objective had been to demonstrate to his workmen, who would be doing the same thing under more hazardous conditions, his own complete confidence in the safety of the rope. He would ask no man to do anything he would not do himself.

Moreover, he allowed that he and the assistant engineers had been getting too much praise lately. Roebling was the hardest worker of them all, he told one reporter. “He does most of the brain work,” Farrington said.

Be that as it may, Farrington had done something neither Roebling nor anyone else had. In the eyes of the public, for the very first time, he had transformed years of talk and expense and several million tons of granite into a bridge over the East River. He had shown the thing could work. And like it or not, he himself had been transformed by the act.

He said he had simply gone along for the ride. Anyone could have done it was what he told people; the only thing necessary was to sit there, all of which was perfectly true to a very large extent. But the more he went on that way, deprecating his own part in the spectacle, the more he seemed to be saying something else—that this bridge was a more miraculous affair than one might imagine. It had not only taken him over the river with perfect safety, it had transformed him into a hero. And, of course, the fact that he was a plain mechanic, but a man of natural good sense and courage, did nothing to diminish his popular appeal.

His crossing, very simply, had been a “public triumph,” as
Harper’s Monthly
said. Nobody who saw it would ever forget it. He could say whatever he liked.

The work to be done now, briefly stated, was this:

Two more three-quarter-inch wire ropes would have to be taken across and spliced to form a second endless traveler. Then a heavier rope, called the “carrier,” would follow, this one to hold the weight of several still heavier ropes to be hauled over. These would be the two-and-a-quarter-inch ropes to hold the light frame platforms, or “cradles,” upon which the men would stand when binding the wires for the great cables. Then supporting ropes for the footbridge would have to be laid up, the footbridge built, ropes for handrails strung, and two storm cables attached from tower to tower beneath the footbridge, in inverted arcs, to keep the footbridge from being carried off by the wind. All that accomplished, the real work of spinning the cables could begin and it would be then that the travelers would perform their vital role.

Work on the second traveler rope began the very next day, a Saturday. But this time the rope was hauled over by the first traveler, rather than going by water, and before the day was over, bystanders along the river front were treated to still one more memorable, but entirely unexpected, high-wire performance.

At eight that morning, first thing, a big reel of wire had been rolled into position on top of the Brooklyn anchorage. One end was lashed to the traveler. The traveler was started up. Slowly the reel unwound and the new rope started toward the Brooklyn tower, seeming to creep out over the other rope, but really moving with it.

When about fifty feet had run out, signal flags waved, the traveler was stopped momentarily, the two ropes were lashed together with heavy twine by men stationed next to the reel—to keep the new rope from sagging—and then the rope was started up again. After that similar lashings were made every fifty feet.

As the new rope crept out over the housetops, the news spread through the whole neighborhood and across the river by ferry, in advance of the rope. In no time the streets and wharves were once more jammed with spectators. Once the rope had crossed the river, passed over the New York tower and reached the anchorage beyond, it was secured at each end in a sort of monster vise. But then the lashings had to be cut loose from end to end and the one way to do that was by hand.

Accordingly, after the noontime break, two riggers began swinging themselves simultaneously from each tower, down the land spans, toward the two anchorages. From the New York tower came a former sailor with the appropriate name of Harry Supple, who had been working on the bridge for six years and had been among those injured when the derricks fell. He used a boatswain’s chair, like the one Farrington had crossed on, which was hung to the traveler by a big iron shackle. Seating himself as Farrington had, only without any restraining ropes about his chest, Supple took two half hitches around the traveler with a short length of rope that he would use to check his speed on the way down. Then he pushed off into mid-air, kicked his feet to get the shackle started, and with sudden speed slid down to the first lashing, where he pulled hard on his rope and stopped.

A few fast slashes with a sheath knife and he had the knot severed. Instantly, bits of twine flew into the air, the wire ropes sprang apart with a terrific force, causing the new one to drop down in a big loop and the old one, which Supple was riding on, to vibrate violently along its whole length. Supple himself was seen to drop six feet in his frail-looking seat and bounce about wildly, but he appeared not in the least bothered by that and immediately cast off his gauntlet (as the stay rope was called) and continued on. He sliced open the next lashing, the next and the next, proceeding with incredible speed, a noisy crowd urging him on all the way to the bottom. To separate the two ropes from tower to anchorage, a distance of one thousand feet bound by twenty lashings, took him ten minutes. When his feet landed on the anchorage, the ovation was such that he ought to have taken a long bow.