Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

When the fourteenth panel from each shore was erected there was 13,000 tons in suspension on each side of the harbour, and a gap of 42 inches at the centre. Slowly but surely the gap was reduced over a period of 10 days by hydraulically releasing the cables at their point of attachment at the junction of the top chords and end posts until the extremities of the two half arches came to rest on a central bearing pin at nearly midnight on August 19, 1931, as perfectly and as truly as truth itself.

There were only five men up there in the darkness when the actual closure took place: our Chief Erector, Mr. Hipwell, my assistant, Mr. Alfred Martin, Mr. Freeman, Dr. Bradfield, and myself. When we realised what had just taken place we were so overawed with the mightiness of it all that we did not speak – I for one could not – and I think each was conscious of the feeling of the other. The silence to me was most impressive, and when I could trust myself to speak I broke the silence by saying: “Well, boys, that’s that, and thank God she is home.” We shook hands with each other, stepped into the cage, and were lowered down to our little launch in the middle of the harbour, and went home, but so far as I was concerned, not to get much sleep.

Within two hours of the closing I received a telephone call from the editor of one of the leading London papers inquiring whether it was true we had closed the Sydney Harbour Bridge arch that night. He had a 10-minute talk with me. He was, I presume, sitting comfortably in his office with a cup of tea, whilst I was shivering in the corridor of my flat at the Astor at half past two in the morning.

The following morning the Union Jack and the Australian Ensign were flown from the jibs of the two creeper cranes to signify to the people of Sydney that the arch had been successfully closed. When the flags were unfurled our pleasure at having satisfactorily achieved what many engineers had termed “the impossible” was intensified by the spontaneous burst of cheering and singing by people passing on their way to business on the crowded ferries, and the whistling by vessels in the harbour. I shall probably never again feel the thrill that I felt at 8.30 on the morning of August 20, 1930. It was a stirring moment when we heard the strains of the National Anthem coming up to us on the bridge from the crowded ferries passing underneath. The workers on the bridge all sprang to attention like true soldiers and saluted the flags.

It was a memorable day. All the leading hands and all the men engaged on the releasing of the cables (who did yeoman service) received a golden sovereign from the company as a souvenir of the event, and every man and boy on the job (over 1400) received as a personal gift from Mr. Freeman a new two shilling piece, with an invitation from him to drink a toast of prosperity and long life to the bridge. A half-holiday with pay for all was declared, and Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, my wife and myself spent our half-holiday at the Taronga Park Zoo, and so finished our little celebration.

Comment

Comment

Ennis’ piece begins thus:

When a lad at school in Scotland, I remember learning a little proverb that went something like this:

From little acorns big trees grow.

I daresay it will be wondered what this has got to do with the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but this will be clearer when I say that four men sitting over a cup of tea at the late Sir Arthur Dorman’s country home [Grey Towers, Nunthorpe] made the decision to tender for the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the result of this decision is now spanning Sydney Harbour. The four mon were the late Sir Arthur J. Dorman, founder and chairman of the company, the late Sir T. Hugh Bell, vice-chairman of the company, Mr. Ralph Freeman, of Sir Douglas Fox and Partners, and myself.

The discussion leading to a decision to tender lasted barely an hour, and it was decided that Mr. Freeman would act as our consulting engineer, and would carry out all work relating to designs.

When I left England to submit our tender, I carried with me seven designs, and one of these was accepted by the Government of New South Wales, the contract price being £4,217,721. Our successful design was for the construction of a two-hinged arch bridge of 28 panels, with a clear span of 1630ft, with 10 approach spans, and approach piers and main pylons in granite finish.

After the signing of the contract I returned to England and spent six very busy months in preparing the layout and plan for our fabrication shops, to be erected in Sydney, and in the ordering of the equipment required for the erection in the field – many machines and cranes having to be specially designed on account of the extremely heavy nature of the work. At the same time I laid down a programme of delivery operations to suit site requirements, and altogether an expenditure of practically one million pounds in equipment was incurred during my visit.

I returned to Australia at the end of 1924, accompanied by half a dozen of our own young experts. These men were from Yorkshire, and as young lads roamed the Cleveland Hills as Captain Cook did as a boy.

We brought with us many setting out plans and drawings, and we were therefore ready to start work immediately we arrived.

Readers presumably still know that James Cook achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia.

The University of Sydney’s defunct minisite on “Bradfield’s bridge” seems to suggest that the photo used above and others on their site are from Minutes of Proceedings of The Institution of Civil Engineers, Vol. 238 – Session 1933-1934, Pt. 2. London: 1935. The article cited contains a fine photo of Ennis and Bradfield “joining the top chord,” but unfortunately reproduction is very poor.

Dorman Long’s Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tyne Bridge both borrowed from the Hell Gate Bridge in New York. Dorman Long’s design team for both projects and others such as London’s Lambeth Bridge was remarkable for the inclusion of a woman, Dorothy Buchanan, first female member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. On the latter, she wrote: “I felt that I represented all the women in the world. It was my hope that I would be followed by many others.”

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Original

When the fourteenth panel from each shore was erected there was 13,000 tons in suspension on each side of the harbour, and a gap of 42 inches at the centre. Slowly but surely the gap was reduced over a period of 10 days by hydraulically releasing the cables at their point of attachment at the junction of the top chords and end posts until the extremities of the two half arches came to rest on a central bearing pin at nearly midnight on August 19, 1931, as perfectly and as truly as truth itself.

There were only five men up there in the darkness when the actual closure took place: our Chief Erector, Mr. Hipwell, my assistant, Mr. Alfred Martin, Mr. Freeman, Dr. Bradfield, and myself. When we realised what had just taken place we were so overawed with the mightiness of it all that we did not speak – I for one could not – and I think each was conscious of the feeling of the other. The silence to me was most impressive, and when I could trust myself to speak I broke the silence by saying: “Well, boys, that’s that, and thank God she is home.” We shook hands with each other, stepped into the cage, and were lowered down to our little launch in the middle of the harbour, and went home, but so far as I was concerned, not to get much sleep.

Within two hours of the closing I received a telephone call from the editor of one of the leading London papers inquiring whether it was true we had closed the Sydney Harbour Bridge arch that night. He had a 10-minute talk with me. He was, I presume, sitting comfortably in his office with a cup of tea, whilst I was shivering in the corridor of my flat at the Astor at half past two in the morning.

The following morning the Union Jack and the Australian Ensign were flown from the jibs of the two creeper cranes to signify to the people of Sydney that the arch had been successfully closed. When the flags were unfurled our pleasure at having satisfactorily achieved what many engineers had termed “the impossible” was intensified by the spontaneous burst of cheering and singing by people passing on their way to business on the crowded ferries, and the whistling by vessels in the harbour. I shall probably never again feel the thrill that I felt at 8.30 on the morning of August 20, 1930. It was a stirring moment when we heard the strains of the National Anthem coming up to us on the bridge from the crowded ferries passing underneath. The workers on the bridge all sprang to attention like true soldiers and saluted the flags.

It was a memorable day. All the leading hands and all the men engaged on the releasing of the cables (who did yeoman service) received a golden sovereign from the company as a souvenir of the event, and every man and boy on the job (over 1400) received as a personal gift from Mr. Freeman a new two shilling piece, with an invitation from him to drink a toast of prosperity and long life to the bridge. A half-holiday with pay for all was declared, and Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, my wife and myself spent our half-holiday at the Taronga Park Zoo, and so finished our little celebration.

In a few days we commenced an equally important operation, the joining oí the top chord, but before making this connection it was necessary to transfer a stress of between seven and eight thousand tons from the bottom chord into the top chord.

This stress was introduced by the insertion of eight 1000-ton hydraulic jacks into a space provided for this purpose between the ends of the final two top chord members. These jacks forced the top chords apart to a predetermined extent, and when the required stress was transferred, massive steel machined packings were inserted between the ends oí the chords – in other words the “keystone” was placed in position.

On the completion of this operation the arch took its final condition of a two-hinged structure, the hinges being the main bearings at the base of the pylons.

Under full live load of traffic conditions the four main bearings will sustain a thrust of 78,800 tons. The dead weight of the main span is 42,000 tons.

With the exception of the erection of the main hangers, varying in length up to 193ft, and tile main cross girders, 100ft long, 14ft deep, and weighing upwards of 100 tons each, all of which were lifted in their full length, the work became comparatively simple, and by the use of a special cradle we designed for the erection of the hangers, we made rapid progress with the completion of the entire floor system, and I shall always remember the speedy erection of this dangerous and complicated portion of the work – nearly 12,000 tons being erected in six months.

In the fabrication and erection we used over 5,000,000 rivets, and of the 54,000 tons of steel required in connection with the erection of tile bridge, 40,000 tons were manufactured by Dorman, Long, and Co., Ltd.

I mention this because I have never known a contract of the magnitude of the Sydney Harbour Bridge which has been carried out by one organisation, involving not only setting out, excavations, granite quarrying, and dressing, concreting, fabrication, and erection, but also the manufacturing of the steel from their own raw materials.

929 words.

Tags

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• Arch bridge (1) ·
• Arthur Dorman (1) ·
• Australia (1) ·
• Bridge (2) ·
• Cook, James (1728-79) (3), North-Riding-born explorer, cartographer, and Royal Navy captain, three Pacific voyages 1768-79 ·
• Crane (machine) (1) ·
• Dorman Long (1) ·
• Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan (1) ·
• God Save the Queen (1) ·
• Granite (1) ·
• Hell Gate Bridge (1) ·
• Institution of Civil Engineers (1) ·
• John Bradfield (engineer) (1) ·
• Lambeth Bridge (1) ·
• Lawrence Ennis (1) ·
• London (74) ·
• Middlesbrough (3) ·
• New South Wales (1) ·
• New York City (1) ·
• Newcastle upon Tyne (8) ·
• North Yorkshire (10) ·
• Nunthorpe (2) ·
• Proverb (6) ·
• Ralph Freeman (civil engineer, born 1880) (1) ·
• Sir Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet (1) ·
• Steel (12) ·
• Structural load (1) ·
• Sydney Harbour Bridge (1) ·
• Sydney (1) ·
• Taronga Zoo (1) ·
• Teesside (2) ·
• Through arch bridge (1) ·
• Tyne Bridge (1) ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·

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