Blood-red wonder of a golden age

Published on Thursday 6 April 2006 01:39

A FEW YEARS back, AG Barr ran an advertising campaign of even more genius than that of Guinness.

Useful information

Forth Bridges Tourist Information Centre: 0870 6096160 forthbridges.org.uk

visitfife.com

forthbridgememorial.org

Hawes Inn: 0131 3311990

Queensferry Museum: 0131 3315545

maidoftheforth.comFirstly, the Forth Crossing itself is deeply symbolic. It spans Scotland north to south just as the river divides the country. Some rivers unite countries by allowing trade up their length into previously dark interiors. Some, like the Forth, are challenges to be overcome because they were an obstacle to trade, travel and unity.

It was partly because of her sponsorship of the crossing at Queen's Ferry for pilgrims, thus connecting her capital at Dunfermline to her chapel in Edinburgh, that Queen Margaret became St Margaret. For a Saxon Queen to become a Scottish Saint requires something special, good works on a grand scale. Crossing the Forth, and thus uniting the country, had that significance.

Robert Louis Stevenson understood Scotland and in Kidnapped, a young David Balfour is launched over the Forth into danger, lawlessness and excitement and, towards the end of the book, comes back across the divide (this time at Stirling) to safety, civilisation and tedium.

It is true that the railway economics of the 19th century told a different story about the significance of the Forth crossing. After all, the Tay Bridge was built, swept away and rebuilt before the Forth crossing was finished. Presumably the Tay crossing mattered more to train journey times. But economics is not everything and in terms of a challenge on an epic scale, it was the Forth crossing which became symbolic of the genius of Scottish engineering and thus of Scotland.

The triumph of the Forth Bridge's construction, as the largest cantilever bridge in the world, put to rest the shame of the collapse of the Tay Bridge some 20 years earlier. On 21 January 1890, two 1000ft-long test trains, each comprising a locomotive and 50 wagons and both weighing 900 tons, rolled onto the bridge from the south. The trains did not plunge into the Forth 150ft below but crossed safely, as has the billion and a half tons of train and freight that has followed since. It was Victorian Scotland's moon landing, a triumph over the elements - an equaliser in the great game against the cruel fates, which had laid the first Tay Bridge low. A generation later, the huge cantilever bridge at Quebec pipped the Forth Bridge by reaching 1,800ft in its centre span, 90ft longer than her Forth parent. Even now, despite the popularity of cantilever designs in the US and Japan in the 1970s, the Forth Bridge remains in silver medal position. However, it is also the original and the one, at the time dubbed the eighth wonder of the world. It is still special.

In reality, there is something of the blood price about the bridge. The trains did not end up in the river but many of the 5,000 "briggers" did, with the latest estimates suggesting 79 paid the supreme price during its construction. When I was at school, the generally accepted figure was that 57 people had died to build the bridge, still a memorably large figure for a bridge whose colour resembles that of dried blood. There is an understandable wish to believe that something, which inflicted such a cost, must be of enormous significance. If it is true for wars, it should be true for something which is infinitely more productive.

There is now a memorial campaign to recognise the extent of the sacrifice of those who died, but also the achievements of the full 5,000 who built the bridge over a seven-year period for the princely wage of up to eight pence an hour. Chaired by local MP, John Barrett, the committee has a fine memorial website and has corrected the historical record on the numbers who died. It hopes, in time, to construct a permanent memorial.

All of the above explains something of the bridge's iconic status, but there is something else, which accounts for her supreme position in Scottish hearts and minds. For most of the 20th century, Scotland was up against it - the bleeding of the Great War, the depression of the 1930s, the decline of heavy industry, accelerated emigration and the drift of Scotland's great companies to the south. For a country in relative decline, there is always a temptation to take great comfort in achievements - the supremacy of Scottish education, excellence of Scottish medicine and brilliance of Scottish engineering. The Forth Bridge represented that golden age. Instantly recognisable, it represents glory on a grand scale and it stands impervious to time and the elements - a reminder of a golden age when all was possible if the country dared to dream. The task now is surely to take that inspiration and translate it onto a modern canvas. The Forth Bridge can still span more than a river but become an arterial link between past and future - between the old age of Scottish achievement and the one yet to come.

7 FACTS

The bridge was a prime target for the Luftwaffe but the Nazi bombers never hit their mark. However, the German propaganda machine tried to claim success by inverting an image of the bridge so rocks in the Firth looked like clouds of smoke.

Six and a half million rivets, weighing 4,200 tonnes, were used to make the bridge. When repairs were carried out in 1996, 1,000 original rivets were made into paperweights and sold for 30 each.

Gustav Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, was a guest at the official opening of the bridge on 4 May, 1890. The Prince of Wales hammered in the final rivet, made of solid gold.

Chief foreman on the bridge was Japanese engineer Kaichi Watanabe. He featured in a famous photo demonstrating the cantilever design and later became president of several Japanese companies.

After the 1879 Tay Bridge collapse, Thomas Bouch's original design for a Forth suspension bridge was abandoned - but his pier can still be seen at Inchgarvie.

The expression "painting the Forth Bridge" came to mean a task that was never finished. It took a whole year to cover all 400,000 square metres with paint. The paint now used is designed to last 20 years but still in the famous Forth Bridge red.

The Forth Railway Bridge Memorial Trust is raising funds for a memorial to "briggers" who died building the bridge.