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136 Louis Stott
strengthen the plate girder deck after the spectacular Tacoma disaster which
occurred in November, 1940. The Severn Bridge, opened two years later than
the Forth Bridge, has a box girder deck which is shaped to reduce its resistance
to the wind which in consequence strikes vehicles on the bridge with some
force. In fact, up to date as it was, the Forth Road Bridge was superseded in a
technical sense by the Severn Bridge, two years later. It is strengthened
inelegantly by what were to be, within two years, outdated methods. The
engineers were Messrs Mott Hay and Anderson, who had built the steel arch
bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in conjunction with Freeman Fox and
Partners, the firm which designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge of 1932 and the
Medway Bridge in Kent.
The bridge carries two 24 foot carriageways, two nine foot cycle tracks and two six
foot sidewalks, the whole scheme which provides for eight miles of dual
carriageway approach roads and incorporates 24 minor bridges, was estimated to
cost £18 million.
There are four stages in the erection of a bridge of this kind, in which the main
cables pass over high towers and are anchored independently of the deck
structure. First come the foundations for the towers and preparatory work for the
cable anchorages. After the towers have been erected the the cables are spun.
Finally the deck structure is suspended,
Dorothy Henry and J. A. Jerome Modern British Bridges 1965
Commemorative stamps, much less usual then than now, were issued to
mark the opening. Edwin Morgan, now Glasgow’s ‘poet laureate’ wrote an
enigmatic poem, but it was Sidney Goodsir Smith, the New Zealander who
became Edinburgh’s poet, who caught the imagination with a brilliant
updating of Robert Burns’ poem, The Twa Brigs, about the old and the new
bridges in Ayr, to celebrate the existence of two Forth Bridges:
– And here it is:
The new brig we’d dreamed o’
But never dreamed sae bonny, like a sprite,
An Ariel, sae licht as etter’s gossamer it looks …
There she swings and lowps the Frith
Wi a lichtsome lauch, sheer glee and joy,
A dance-step wrocht in siller wire,
A lassie’s lowp, fit foil for the stridin strenth,
Dour and purposefu’, o’ her brither’s o’ the iron road
Near a hunder years her senior – it’s truth!
There she swings and loups
And looks at her auld brither
Like a wee slip o’ lassie to her busty jo
As gin she said, as lassie says,
‘See me! See my braw new dress, Johnie!
See me nou, like a swan,
No, a swallow mairlike, swingin out
Athort Queen Margaret’s Passage,
See me, sweet hairt, Auld Stumpie, look at me,
Like a fling o’ the airm, a rope flung
Athort the Firth – and we’re ane, the gither.