The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

by David McCullough

  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:

  One of the most experienced engineers in the place held the lever [McNulty most likely], and as Mr. Farrington was seen to approach the top of the tower the engine was slowed. All eyes were now strained to discern the movements of the voyager. That he appreciated the danger was evident, as was also the reason for freeing himself from the restraints of the encircling rope, for he stood upright again with his feet upon the board and his hands ready to save himself by grasping the coping of the tower in case the wire was not stopped in time. The red flag was seen to drop, and simultaneously the wire was stopped. Two men stood by ready to help Mr. Farrington upon the tower, but he was still a little too low down to be reached. The red flag was held aloft, and the engineer, interpreting that signal to mean “go ahead,” started the wire again very cautiously. It had moved but a few feet when the flag dropped again, and the engine was stopped instantaneously. Mr. Farrington was now nearly level with the top of the tower, and strong hands grasping his, he was upon his feet and surrounded by an excited crowd of friends in a second.

  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 wou
ld 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.

  In the meantime, however, spectators in Brooklyn had not fared so well. The other rigger, a German named William Kohrner, had been terribly nervous before stepping off from the tower and once under way he had been both awkward and maddeningly cautious. He held on to the wire rope with both hands, letting himself down ever so slowly and only short distances at a time. He took so long with each knot that there was some speculation on top of the tower as to whether he might finish the job that week. As it was, he took nearly an hour to do the same thing Supple had done in ten minutes. So when the time came to start on the main span, Patrick Timbs, the man picked to leave from the Brooklyn tower, was told by the others in no uncertain terms “to do better by them.”

  The plan was for Timbs and Thomas Carroll to slide down from the two towers and meet in the middle over the river, cutting the lashings in just the way the other two had. That done, they were to hitch themselves to the traveler, which would then be entirely free, and be hauled back up to the Brooklyn tower.

  Timbs and Carroll were both Englishmen. Timbs was lithe and powerfully built. Carroll, a huge, portly man, would be testing the wire, it was said, with well over two hundred pounds. Timbs had come darting down his side at a great clip, recovering for Brooklyn whatever glory had been lost by the awkward Kohrner. But Carroll had run into trouble almost right away.

  For some reason, probably to gain speed going down the rope, Carroll had hung his seat by a pulley, instead of the iron shackle used by the others. The pulley had worked fine at first. He shot away from the tower faster than any of them. But as he approached the second lashing, the pulley jammed between the two traveler ropes and try as he would he was unable to budge it loose or to reach far enough ahead to get at the next lashing.

  It was at this point that young Supple, who had by now returned to the top of the New York tower, decided to go to the rescue. He swung himself out over the river, sailor-style, hand over hand, with his legs wrapped around the traveler rope. He reached Carroll quickly enough, passed him by, and cut the next lashing, which instantly freed the pulley. Then back he went, up to the tower, in the same way he had come down and carrying on an easy conversation with those on the tower all the while. The crowd below was ecstatic.

  Carroll, meanwhile, slid on, only to get caught the same as before, again and again, and freeing himself only after the greatest effort. His progress was so slow, in fact, that he was no more than halfway down his side of the rope when Timbs, having passed the center of the sag, had started to haul himself by hand up the steep incline toward Carroll, cutting the lashings as he went.

  Once they met and all the lashings were free, there was a new problem. The traveler would not move. Somehow the two ropes had gotten twisted around each other, with the result that it was impossible to haul the men in. So something had to be improvised.

  A ring was put over the traveler and a heavy weight and one end of a hemp rope were attached to it. The weight, it was hoped, would be enough to carry the ring and the rope down from the New York tower to the stranded pair, who were perhaps four hundred feet distant. But the ring slid only a quarter of the distance, then stopped for good.

  Once more Harry Supple went into action. Fixing a loop in the same hemp rope, he wrapped it about one leg and worked his way out toward Timbs and Carroll, both of whom, to the amazement of everyone, seemed quite nonchalant about the whole business. Timbs, swinging in his perch, his arms resting on the upper wire, looked as though he might be about to fall asleep.

  Supple reached them with no trouble, tied the end of the rope he carried to Carroll’s chair, climbed onto the chair with Carroll, and the two of them were pulled back to the tower, leaving Timbs hanging out there by himself.

  The traveler was tried again then and this time it worked. Timbs began moving along back toward Brooklyn, whence he came, swinging his legs, as though on a joy ride, looking all about up and down the river. But before he was a third of the way to Brooklyn there was a sudden frightful jerk in the wire, as though something had snapped, and it was noted by those watching through glasses that Timbs suddenly changed his expression. A belt on the engine had broken and it took twenty minutes to fix it,
which were twenty minutes during which Timbs had no way of knowing what the trouble was. Gradually regaining his composure, he just sat very still, watching the boats below and waving his hand in answer to cheers from passengers gazing up from passing ferries. Presently he was pulled to the tower and the rest of the day was devoted to getting the new rope into proper position.

  The papers made much of all this. Even the World, which had seldom ever had a good word for the bridge, ran a long account, calling it, in a big headline, a “Stupendous Tight-Rope Performance.” And later, in a formal report to the Chief Engineer, Paine would write, “Mr. Harry Supple was all that could be desired as foreman of riggers…”

  When another rope was taken over on Monday (the second half of the new traveler), the crowds were there again and the event was treated by the press as a major theatrical opening might be, or a new circus in town. People knew more what to expect this time. And this time the new men being given a chance at the work were out to break Harry Supple’s record of one thousand feet in ten minutes, which one of them, William Miller, managed to do, going the same route Supple had from the New York tower to the New York anchorage in seven and a half minutes. “As he neared the anchorage,” wrote a reporter, “the order was given, ‘Stand by, men, to snatch him.’ His face was firmly set, and his eyes had a queer light in them, his face shining with the galvanized iron dust that the iron shackle of his chair had ground from the wires, and his hands were in active use on the rope. When he came within reach the men caught him, and with a rousing cheer landed him on the stonework.”

  Two others, Frederick Arnold and James O’Neil, had also, by now, taken off from the towers and could be seen plummeting pell-mell down the extreme ends of the main span over the river. O’Neil, the man from the New York tower, appeared to be making the best time. But then he stopped abruptly, as though his chair had jammed the way Carroll’s had. But when the engineers, Martin, McNulty, Paine, turned their glasses on him, they saw he was getting out of his chair and climbing up onto the wire above. Next thing, he slung himself by a strap—his belt apparently—to the wire he had not been riding on and it was then that everyone on the tower realized what had happened. Some way or other the two ropes had crossed and O’Neil had jumped off from the tower with his chair slung to the wrong one, to the new rope rather than to the traveler. O’Neil had discovered this in time, obviously, and with great nerve decided to make the change immediately.