“No one man builds a bridge. He is part of a team, and they all built it. And a bridge is, in a way, a monument; a monument of lasting benefit to mankind.”
So said John Alexander King Hamilton, the resident engineer during the construction of the Forth Road Bridge who, aptly enough, also became the first motorist to pay the two shilling and six pence toll to drive north into Fife, following its official opening by HM The Queen on September 4, 1964. Alas, such noble thoughts were not entirely upheld by the first to cross the bridge in the other direction – a RAC patrolman who had triumphed over his AA counterpart in a race for the honour.
Half a century later, a new road bridge – the publicly named Queensferry Crossing – now rises to the west of the Forth Road Bridge, ready to taken on the majority of vehicular traffic crossing the Firth from 2016. As that new dawn approaches, it’s nevertheless timely to celebrate the Forth Road Bridge’s own golden anniversary – celebrations which, thanks to the world wide web, are likely to be both global and personal.
Fifty years ago, the Bridge was almost invisible in the morning mist which prevented a celebratory flypast by the RAF. But the other Armed Forces played their part in the opening ceremony: soldiers from Lowland regiments linked up symbolically with a Highland brigade from the north to mark the opening of the new crossing, while Royal Navy vessels on the Forth fired a 21-gun salute. Not to be undone, British Railways fired 120 fireworks from the Forth Bridge to salute what they called the “slender concrete daughter” of the “steel lady of the Forth”.
For clarity’s sake, I should point out that I was there at the official opening, huddled among the estimated 50,000 members of the public who gathered at South and North Queensferry on that Friday morning to mark both the beginning of a new era – the opening of the bridge – and the end of an old one – the final sailing of a ferry service which had previously carried up to 1.5 million people a year across the Firth of Forth and could trace its roots back 800 years. Unfortunately, for readers of The Scots Magazine, I must admit to not taking any notes; my only excuse being that I was barely seven months old at the time!
For many of the people there on the day, the official opening of the Bridge was the triumphant conclusion of a 40-year campaign. Yet the idea of bridging the Firth of Forth was itself hardly new; probably the earliest dates from 1740, back when Bonnie Prince Charlie was a mere lad of 20. Admittedly, it’s fair to suggest that – even if it had been a practical proposition, which it wasn’t – an impending Jacobite uprising provided sufficient reason for some serious government inaction on the issue!
The first well-documented plan for a crossing was prepared in 1817 by an Edinburgh engineer and surveyor by the name of James Anderson. Possibly influenced by Thomas Telford’s plan for a chain bridge over the Mersey, Anderson opted for a chain bridge costing £144,000, with the chains being anchored at each abutment and passing over the top of two braced iron pillars – one 518 metres (1,700 feet) from the south shore, the second on the island of Inchgarvie. From these chains the suspension was by vertical links. Anderson also proposed a second, more complex arrangement costing £205,000.
Neither scheme attracted any backers, but many people echoed Anderson’s belief that a bridge of some kind was vital. “The erection of a bridge across the Forth at Queensferry,” he wrote at the time, “is a projection that everyone who is acquainted with the situation must consider as a work of the greatest utility, indeed of the first national and commercial advantage that this part of the kingdom will admit of.”
It would take a further 75 years, and the increased popularity of the railways, before work eventually started on the now iconic Forth Bridge, which continues to carry regular rail services to this day. Using Inchgavrie as one of its main supports, the Forth Bridge was constructed with shipbuilidng techniques and completed in 1890 at a cost of approximately £2 million.
Some five years later, however, the first motor cars arrived on Scottish roads, heralding the exceptional growth in motorised road transport that, less than three decades later, inspired serious demands for a road bridge across the Firth of Forth – and, arguably, a further 40 years of wrangles, frustrations and missed opportunities!
The instigator of the modern campaign was the motoring pioneer and journalist J Inglis Ker, who presented his initial proposals at a meeting in 1923, presided by Edinburgh’s Lord Provost within the comfy confines of South Queensferry’s Hawes Inn. By the following April, the UK’s Minister of Transport had pledged to meet 75% of the cost of a survey, though it would take the best part of four years before Edinburgh-based engineers Mott, Hay & Anderson reported on three possible sites for the Bridge and gave an estimated total cost for the project of £6 millon.
The 1930s, however, provided a catalogue of delays and disputes between local authorities and successive Ministers of Transport, not least about money and who should pay the most. On the plus side, the holdup enabled Mott, Hay & Anderson to submit a report on a fourth, somewhat cheaper site for the Bridge – the one, utilising the submerged reef of basalt known as the Mackintosh Rock, that was eventually used. But by 1936, with war in Europe looming on the horizon, Minister of Transport Mr Hore-Belisha, announced that the UK Government couldn’t possibly embark on any such schemes given the overriding importance of funding its defence programme.
It would not be until after the Second World War that campaigning for the Bridge was renewed, but delays continued, in part because greater priority was repeatedly given to other projects such as the Clyde Tunnel in Glasgow. Another distraction proved to be a belated proposal to instead add a roadway to the existing Forth Bridge; it would take several years and numerous expert opinions to convince Whitehall and the Scottish Office that this wasn’t a viable alternative.
The green light for the Bridge was finally given on February 10, 1958; consulting engineers Freeman Fox & Partners worked alongside Mott, Hay & Anderson to oversee the bridge’s design and supervise its construction while the ACD Bridge Company – a consortium of the UK’s three largest construction engineering firms: Sir William Arrol & Company, The Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company and Dorman Long (Bridge & Engineering) Ltd – ensured the construction work stayed within the UK.
Progress on the Bridge initially went well, especially regarding the two principle towers and on-land infrastructure; for a time there was even talk of the Bridge opening earlier than originally expected, in mid-1963. However, the all-important cable spinning process, required to form the main cables which would carry the weight of the deck and traffic, proved significantly slower than expected, thanks to a spell of unusually cold and windy weather which hampered operations. Given the meteorological delights of the Firth of Forth, little wonder that one worker, who had helped erect a bridge in Alaska, claimed to prefer the Alaskan job!
The Bridge’s story has, of course, continued well beyond its official opening. Usage has increased year on year: in 1965, the first full year of operation, 2,282,308 motorists paid tolls to cross the bridge either north or south; by 1996, the figure had risen to 10,168,002 and, by 2013, it stood at 22,929,495. Thanks to this, work began as early as 1990 on strengthening the bridge’s twin towers to cope with the increased weight of traffic; six years later, work was also undertaken to improve defences against colliding ships – which had to be scheduled around the breeding patterns of a colony of rare roseate terns nesting on the nearby Long Craig Rock.
By 2004, the then 40-year old became the first suspension bridge in Europe to have its main cable opened up to check for signs of corrosion. The bridge authority was surprised to discover that 8-10% of the cable’s strength had been been lost thanks to corrosion, and work began immediately to prevent further strength loss – including the installation of a cable dehumidification system five years later. The level of corrosion was also used as significant evidence to support the construction of a new 21st century road crossing.
As well as a range of celebratory events as part of the annual Forth Bridges Festival this September, a new Forth Bridges Scrapbooks website will enable members of the public to share and enjoy photographs, stories and memorabilia connected with both iconic crossings. Often overshadowed by its elder, this will surely be an opportunity for us all to remember just how much the Forth Road Bridge has made its mark on Scotland and its people.
An edited version of this article was published in the September 2014 issue of The Scots Magazine.
