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