The Great Bridge (48 page)

In the meantime, however, spectators in Brooklyn had not fared so well. The other rigger, a German named William Kohrner, had been terribly nervous before stepping off from the tower and once under way he had been both awkward and maddeningly cautious. He held on to the wire rope with both hands, letting himself down ever so slowly and only short distances at a time. He took so long with each knot that there was some speculation on top of the tower as to whether he might finish the job that week. As it was, he took nearly an hour to do the same thing Supple had done in ten minutes. So when the time came to start on the main span, Patrick Timbs, the man picked to leave from the Brooklyn tower, was told by the others in no uncertain terms “to do better by them.”

The plan was for Timbs and Thomas Carroll to slide down from the two towers and meet in the middle over the river, cutting the lashings in just the way the other two had. That done, they were to hitch themselves to the traveler, which would then be entirely free, and be hauled back up to the Brooklyn tower.

Timbs and Carroll were both Englishmen. Timbs was lithe and powerfully built. Carroll, a huge, portly man, would be testing the wire, it was said, with well over two hundred pounds. Timbs had come darting down his side at a great clip, recovering for Brooklyn whatever glory had been lost by the awkward Kohrner. But Carroll had run into trouble almost right away.

For some reason, probably to gain speed going down the rope, Carroll had hung his seat by a pulley, instead of the iron shackle used by the others. The pulley had worked fine at first. He shot away from the tower faster than any of them. But as he approached the second lashing, the pulley jammed between the two traveler ropes and try as he would he was unable to budge it loose or to reach far enough ahead to get at the next lashing.

It was at this point that young Supple, who had by now returned to the top of the New York tower, decided to go to the rescue. He swung himself out over the river, sailor-style, hand over hand, with his legs wrapped around the traveler rope. He reached Carroll quickly enough, passed him by, and cut the next lashing, which instantly freed the pulley. Then back he went, up to the tower, in the same way he had come down and carrying on an easy conversation with those on the tower all the while. The crowd below was ecstatic.

Carroll, meanwhile, slid on, only to get caught the same as before, again and again, and freeing himself only after the greatest effort. His progress was so slow, in fact, that he was no more than halfway down his side of the rope when Timbs, having passed the center of the sag, had started to haul himself by hand up the steep incline toward Carroll, cutting the lashings as he went.

Once they met and all the lashings were free, there was a new problem. The traveler would not move. Somehow the two ropes had gotten twisted around each other, with the result that it was impossible to haul the men in. So something had to be improvised.

A ring was put over the traveler and a heavy weight and one end of a hemp rope were attached to it. The weight, it was hoped, would be enough to carry the ring and the rope down from the New York tower to the stranded pair, who were perhaps four hundred feet distant. But the ring slid only a quarter of the distance, then stopped for good.

Once more Harry Supple went into action. Fixing a loop in the same hemp rope, he wrapped it about one leg and worked his way out toward Timbs and Carroll, both of whom, to the amazement of everyone, seemed quite nonchalant about the whole business. Timbs, swinging in his perch, his arms resting on the upper wire, looked as though he might be about to fall asleep.

Supple reached them with no trouble, tied the end of the rope he carried to Carroll’s chair, climbed onto the chair with Carroll, and the two of them were pulled back to the tower, leaving Timbs hanging out there by himself.

The traveler was tried again then and this time it worked. Timbs began moving along back toward Brooklyn, whence he came, swinging his legs, as though on a joy ride, looking all about up and down the river. But before he was a third of the way to Brooklyn there was a sudden frightful jerk in the wire, as though something had snapped, and it was noted by those watching through glasses that Timbs suddenly changed his expression. A belt on the engine had broken and it took twenty minutes to fix it, which were twenty minutes during which Timbs had no way of knowing what the trouble was. Gradually regaining his composure, he just sat very still, watching the boats below and waving his hand in answer to cheers from passengers gazing up from passing ferries. Presently he was pulled to the tower and the rest of the day was devoted to getting the new rope into proper position.

The papers made much of all this. Even the
World,
which had seldom ever had a good word for the bridge, ran a long account, calling it, in a big headline, a “Stupendous Tight-Rope Performance.” And later, in a formal report to the Chief Engineer, Paine would write, “Mr. Harry Supple was all that could be desired as foreman of riggers…”

When another rope was taken over on Monday (the second half of the new traveler), the crowds were there again and the event was treated by the press as a major theatrical opening might be, or a new circus in town. People knew more what to expect this time. And this time the new men being given a chance at the work were out to break Harry Supple’s record of one thousand feet in ten minutes, which one of them, William Miller, managed to do, going the same route Supple had from the New York tower to the New York anchorage in seven and a half minutes. “As he neared the anchorage,” wrote a reporter, “the order was given, ‘Stand by, men, to snatch him.’ His face was firmly set, and his eyes had a queer light in them, his face shining with the galvanized iron dust that the iron shackle of his chair had ground from the wires, and his hands were in active use on the rope. When he came within reach the men caught him, and with a rousing cheer landed him on the stonework.”

Two others, Frederick Arnold and James O’Neil, had also, by now, taken off from the towers and could be seen plummeting pell-mell down the extreme ends of the main span over the river. O’Neil, the man from the New York tower, appeared to be making the best time. But then he stopped abruptly, as though his chair had jammed the way Carroll’s had. But when the engineers, Martin, McNulty, Paine, turned their glasses on him, they saw he was getting out of his chair and climbing up onto the wire above. Next thing, he slung himself by a strap—his belt apparently—to the wire he had not been riding on and it was then that everyone on the tower realized what had happened. Some way or other the two ropes had crossed and O’Neil had jumped off from the tower with his chair slung to the wrong one, to the new rope rather than to the traveler. O’Neil had discovered this in time, obviously, and with great nerve decided to make the change immediately.

Sitting there on the traveler, a good 185 feet over the river, he cut his chair clear from the shackle and tied the chair ropes to the proper wire. It took him about fifteen minutes to make the switch, “the hearts of many spectators beating fast and hard on witnessing his cool daring.”

O’Neil had moved on again eventually and reached the middle of the river, where Arnold, meantime, had been sitting waiting patiently. Then, after dangling out there for a time, the two of them were towed back to the New York tower.

But the greatest excitement of the day had occurred a little earlier over on the Brooklyn side, where the descent from tower to anchorage was made by none other than E. F. Farrington, who apparently wanted to make up for Kohrner’s poor showing on Saturday and to demonstrate to his men (and just possibly to the Brooklyn spectators as well) how the job ought to be handled.

On the Brooklyn side, also, quite a number of people had been admitted within the enclosure surrounding the tower yard and among them were several seemingly fearless young women who wanted the best view possible of the high-wire performers, and of the fatherly Farrington in particular. One pretty brunette in a pink summer dress, a girl of about eighteen, led the way. Followed by the others, she had climbed to the top of the tower and there, with a pair of opera glasses, waiting for the master mechanic to make his appearance, she was seen to study the vast panorama spread out below.

Farrington, it was understood, would commence his descent at two o’clock and at two o’clock he appeared, dressed like a doctor this time, in suit and tie and a white linen duster and carrying a large knife.

He took his seat, stepped off, and was on his way with no to-do. And he was making swift progress, with all the dispatch of a surgeon, when quite by accident he dropped his knife. It fell some two hundred feet, harming nobody, but it also left Farrington in a rather impossible predicament, or so it would seem from the ground. Farrington, however, proceeded right along as though nothing had happened. When he reached the next lashing, he simply went at it with his hands and to the delight of everyone had it untied in a matter of seconds. Though it took him quite a little while to get down, the crowd stayed with him the whole time and he still managed to do the job faster than had poor Kohrner.

And then the circus acts were over. Both travelers were in position, ready for business, mounted in such a way that the space between the sides of each enormous loop was about twenty-seven feet, or so wide apart that when they were seen from the waterfront or from out on the river, it looked as though four separate ropes had been strung over the towers, placed about where the four great cables were to hang.

“I have carried out your instructions to the letter,” Farrington wrote to Roebling, “…and from my perfect familiarity with your plans, and my own experience, I shall expect the cables of this bridge to equal, if they do not excel, the best that ever were made.”

EVEN
among his political opponents Abram Hewitt was considered an honorable man. There was nothing very engaging about him. A nervous, brusque little person with an authoritative manner, he was anything but the ingratiating good fellow. But he was hard-working, not a politician by trade, and reputedly both intelligent and honest, all qualities that counted high with the electorate in the year 1876.

Hewitt had come quite a way since the late Mayor Havemeyer had asked him to take a look into the bridge management. He was a Congressman now, and more. His friend Tilden, who had become governor of New York chiefly because of his reputation as a standard bearer against Tweed, was the Democratic candidate for President. Hewitt was his campaign manager, and with the depression still gripping the nation, the Republicans divided, and ever more scandal in Washington, it looked as if Tilden might be in the White House come spring. Tilden’s opponent was the mild, modest, and largely unknown Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio, who had been picked that June at a convention in Cincinnati, where the Roebling bridge had been a way for delegates “to take some air” as the balloting dragged on, and where the nominee himself had begun his law career about the time that bridge was being started.

Tilden, however, was not much as a candidate. Cold and secretive by nature, not in the least eloquent, he was also in poor health and rather reluctant to spend any of his sizable personal fortune on behalf of his own cause. As a result Hewitt had become more than just his manager. He was the driving force of the Tilden campaign and, with his brother-in-law, Edward Cooper, the biggest financial contributor. Hewitt also happened to be running for Congress again, but his reputation was so high and his Republican opponent so weak that his election seemed certain, despite the little time he could give to it.

“Hewitt was as true a patriot, as pure a man, as ever lived, in my opinion,” wrote one admiring young campaign worker. Henry Adams, historian and man of letters, whose vision of his times would count so with future historians, wrote that Hewitt was among that New York school of politicians “who played the game for ambition or amusement, and played it, as a rule, much better than the professionals, but whose aims were considerably larger than those of the usual player, and who felt no great love for the cheap drudgery of the work.” Everything considered, Adams judged Hewitt “the best-equipped, the most active-minded, the most industrious…the most useful public man in Washington.”

Hewitt was known for his liberalism and sense of responsibility. He was the wealthy ironmonger who believed in labor unions. He was the Congressman who had the intelligence to appreciate scientific research, ardently supporting the geologic surveys in the West, for example. He was not simply a reform Democrat, he was what all respectable people longed for: a decisive gentleman in public life.

So it is not surprising that when Hewitt introduced a resolution at a meeting of the bridge trustees the first week in September, it was considered an exemplary piece of foresight and was adopted immediately and unanimously.

The principal piece of business to be attended to next was the awarding of the wire contract. It was plain a lot would be riding on the decision. Estimates were that the order for wire would come to somewhere near a million dollars.

Hewitt had arrived at the meeting a little late, just as the president of the board, Henry Murphy, was recounting the progress made since the previous meeting in July and predicting no more problems henceforth. The contractors for the stone had all been paid and the Chief Engineer’s specifications for cabled wire had been approved by the Executive Committee. There was no reason, Murphy said, why the bridge could not be completed in a short time.

But then Hewitt, who was vice-president of the board, said that while he had read the wire specifications and found them to be “eminently wise,” he had not found any provisions concerning those who should be allowed to bid for the contract. Hewitt expressed some surprise about this.

The Chief Engineer was also a manufacturer of cable wire, Hewitt reminded Murphy and the others. He himself was a wire dealer, but he did not consider it just that he should become a bidder, and would not, therefore. Bids from any firm, company, or individual interested in the bridge in any way should not be accepted, he said. The Chief Engineer
especially
should not be allowed to become a bidder. Hewitt said further that if Colonel Roebling was permitted to compete for the contract, he, Hewitt, would resign from the board and have nothing more to do with the bridge. It was quite a little speech. It made an issue of something that had never been considered an issue in all the years since John A. Roebling was first asked to build the bridge and apparently it made a great impression, for when Hewitt offered the following resolution, it was adopted without any further discussion:

There was no specific mention of Roebling or the Roebling company, but just so nobody mistook his intentions, Hewitt later repeated what he had said for the benefit of the press. “I am very strongly opposed to the Roeblings having anything to do with the filling of contracts for the bridge,” he was quoted as saying.

But before the meeting adjourned another man present stood up and asked to be heard. His name was John Riley and he too wanted to say something concerning the Chief Engineer. He said he had understood that Roebling was very ill and unable to attend to his duties, but now he had heard that Roebling’s wife was doing his work for him. Clearly the time had come to give somebody else the job, Riley said. If there were mistakes in the construction of the bridge, the trustees would become liable, and he for one did not intend to be responsible for any such mistakes.

Murphy immediately answered that in the event of Roebling’s death, Martin, Collingwood, or McNulty could take charge of the work (nobody had said anything about Roebling dying) and Kinsella commented that there were no more efficient engineers. That seemed to satisfy Riley and everyone else and the meeting broke up.

That was on September 7, the day after William Tweed, who had disappeared from his house on Madison Avenue nine months before, stepped off a ship at Vigo, Spain, and was immediately arrested. After hiding out in a farmhouse in New Jersey for three months, Tweed had moved to Staten Island and from there went by schooner to Florida, where he lived in the Everglades until he was able to sail for Cuba. In Havana he had booked passage for Spain on a bark called
Carmen.
On the trip across he had been so seasick that he arrived in Spain weighing a scant 160 pounds. Still, incredibly, the Spanish authorities, with only a Nast caricature to go by, had recognized him. The news of his arrest caused a sensation in New York, about the time Hewitt, the man who had taken Tweed’s place in the running of the Bridge Company, was making news with his latest service in behalf of the great public work. His resolution was widely praised. And even though it was an intensely political season, and the pronouncements of candidates were pretty generally viewed with that in mind, Hewitt was taken at his word. Whether he or any of the other trustees anticipated the reaction in Trenton is impossible to say.

The New York and Brooklyn papers carried Hewitt’s resolution and his remarks about the Roeblings on the morning of September 8. In Trenton, later that same day, Washington Roebling dictated a letter of resignation.

His health, he wrote to Henry Murphy, was such that he could no longer continue as Chief Engineer. His doctors had been urging him to give up for the past two years, but he had not, he said, because his personal direction seemed to be absolutely necessary to the success of the bridge. Now things were different. “All plans down to the smallest detail have been prepared by me for several years to come,” he said; so the work would not suffer any if he were no longer in charge. He had been neglecting his private business. (“I have not been inside our mill for four years,” he added, but then thought better of that and had Emily cross it out.) “My health has been undermined by my faithful attention to these duties [as Chief Engineer] and the extra expenses I have been subjected to during these years have far exceeded the recompense I have received and I therefore feel I have earned a rest.”

Then he got to the heart of the matter. He had taken the full burden of responsibility for the engineering of the bridge, he had given the work his every energy, he had made financial sacrifices, he had endured years of physical suffering, but now his own honesty and integrity, and that of his family, had been questioned publicly and this he would not endure, and particularly at the hands of Abram Hewitt. For Roebling, as he would make abundantly clear in time, in his private correspondence, did not share the conventional view of Abram Hewitt.

According to Emily Roebling’s letter book the letter ended there. But a day or so later, still in a rage, Roebling wrote to the Brooklyn
Eagle,
explaining a little further what he meant by Hewitt’s “nominal connection.” Hewitt, Roebling charged, could resign his place as trustee anytime so as to evade his own resolution. The bridge itself meant nothing to Hewitt. But the letter never appeared in the Eagle. Either Roebling decided not to send it or Thomas Kinsella decided not to publish it.

Murphy did not keep Roebling waiting long for an answer. He said he could not accept Roebling’s resignation, only the trustees could do that at their next meeting. In the meantime, he urged Roebling to reconsider, assuring him that his services were vital, and that Hewitt was motivated by only the noblest intentions. Roebling was anything but pacified by this. Still hurt and angry, he was even more outspoken in his reply.

In light of later events, however, the most interesting part of the letter, none of which was ever made public, was this single sentence:

What Henry Murphy thought of this is not known and there is nothing in the record to indicate that he followed up Roebling’s suggestion. So presumably Murphy either knew more than he was ever willing to admit or he figured Roebling’s accusations to be those of a man under a great deal of strain. Roebling and Hewitt had long been rivals in business after all and the Roebling brothers were all known to be staunch partisan Republicans just like their father.

How much Murphy knew about Haigh’s business reputation one can only guess. It is possible that he and the other trustees had no suspicions about the man, but it is not very likely, for J. Lloyd Haigh had certainly not gone unnoticed during his time in Brooklyn.

Haigh had arrived in town some twenty years before. He took up residence on Columbia Heights, joined Plymouth Church, and commenced his social life as “a single gentleman.” He was quite suave and handsome apparently, a fine vocalist and considered “a great catch.” At Plymouth Church he “not only became an enthusiastic attendant, but was noted for his intense admiration for the pretty girls of the Bible class. His captivating manners and his personal attractions made him a welcome guest in many households, and his triumphs in winning hearts soon assured as great a success in that direction as his subsequent career in his business operations.” In a short time he was courting the daughter of a prominent Willow Street family. An engagement was announced and the fashionable part of Brooklyn was “agog with the gossip of the approaching nuptials,” until the father of the bride-to-be did a little checking into Haigh and found the man already had a wife and two children living “in rural retirement.” The wife was brought to Brooklyn to confront Haigh and the whole affair was hushed up as quickly as possible by the Willow Street family.