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Cat's cradle of steel

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  • Cat's cradle of steel

    Calcutta Telegraph, India
    Sunday , July 6 , 2008

    Cat's cradle of steel
    flashback

    The Howrah bridge under construction. A Telegraph picture

    Howrah bridge turns rainbow-hued these days after dark but the ground
    realities of the bridge that was opened to traffic in February 1943
    are rather bleak. Men and women with vegetables and other ware open
    shop at either end of the bridge, and this could not be good news for
    an already fatigued bridge. However, in a city that is increasingly
    being overwhelmed by ugly highrises and shopping malls, both Howrah
    bridge and Vidyasagar Setu are pretty as a picture. But only an expert
    can determine whether they are in the pink of health or not.

    Ever since the city of Calcutta began to develop in Job Charnock's
    time, crossing the Hooghly had been a problem. A floating bridge was
    proposed in 1883 but it was rejected. A suspension bridge financed by
    Dwarkanath Tagore and Joykrishna Mukherjee never materialised. The
    railways came to Calcutta in 1854, and the booking office was at
    Armenian ghat. Steamers shuttled between Howrah and Calcutta as they
    do now. After the Howrah-Delhi rail link was established in 1866, such
    was the rush of passengers that it was too much of a burden for the
    ferry service and country boats.

    Sir Bradford Leslie, who became chief engineer of the East India
    Railway after a stint with the Calcutta Corporation in a similar post,
    took up the task of bridging the gap five years later. So the wooden
    pontoon bridge that was meant to last 25 year but actually survived 75
    years and built at a cost of Rs 18 lakh opened on October 17,
    1874. Small boats could pass under the bridge at all times, but for
    the benefit of larger vessels heading for the docks, its central
    portion used to be floated, usually at night. The time of this
    operation was announced in newspapers everyday. Like Howrah bridge,
    the pontoon bridge, too, used to be blocked with a heavy flow of
    bullock carts, rickshaws, horse-drawn carriages and American
    cars. This bridge was dismantled after Howrah bridge was commissioned
    in 1945.

    The bridge, particularly the wooden parts, had to be repaired several
    times. Thereafter, a six-member committee, including RN Mookerjee,
    recommended that a cantilever-type bridge replace the existing
    one. Maintenance of the pontoon bridge was such a costly affair that
    at last the Bengal government decided to do away with it. Randal,
    Palmer and Tritton prepared a design for a cantilever bridge of 1,500
    ft span and with a fixed height.

    The Cleveland Bridge Company of Darlington bagged the contract in
    1936, although the quotation from Krupp's of Germany was lower. Of the
    26,500 tons used, 23,500 tons was supplied by the Tate Iron and Steel
    Company of Jamshedpur. The best non-corrosive type steel with a high
    percentage of copper was used. Braithwaite, Burn and Jessop Company,
    who joined hands for this project, were the fabricators.

    When the two monoliths (about 180 ft by 81 ft in plan) were sunk to
    form the foundation of the main piers, ancient boats, cannons, and
    coins dating back to the time of John Company were discovered in the
    silt. At the work site, the British were the bosses but their
    assistants were Indians, and the labourers ' skilled riveters and
    `khalasis' ' were Hindus, Sikhs, Punjabis and Pathans. The monoliths
    sank all through the day at the rate of a foot or more a day. One
    particular night, the entire girth crashed in two feet at one go,
    causing a minor quake that was said to have been recorded on the
    seismograph in Kidderpore.

    Work continued apace, short breaks for local festivals and the
    outbreak of World War II, notwithstanding. If eyewitnesses are to be
    believed, during World War II, anti-aircraft guns manned by manacled
    black men were kept on the ready at the base of the bridge to shoot
    down enemy aircraft. This was the time of the Japanese bombing in
    Calcutta. Although the major work was done at four different shops
    here, steelwork shipped from the UK had to brave the German
    submarines.

    Thousands of people gaped at the mammoth construction work and the
    giant cranes weighing 610 tons each. Gradually the steel towers came
    up, and by 1940 the cantilever arms were being erected. The next year
    in December, the two halves of the suspended arms had met despite some
    technical glitches.

    The media took no notice of the opening of the bridge, and not even
    the Calcutta Port Trust's log book recorded it.

    SOUMITRA DAS
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