Fig. 4: Washington Roebling met Emily Warren, the sister of his commanding officer, at a Union Army ball in 1864, and five weeks later he wrote to her, “You are my guiding star.” They were married in January 1865, and Emily famously helped Washington complete the Brooklyn Bridge after he became disabled by the bends in 1872. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Washington soon had to lean extensively on Emily, as he
her in my entire charge and care and I assure that I perform the duties to our mutual satisfaction.” Tree weeks later, Washington wrote to Emily, “Oh how I wish I had just one of those sweet kisses that you can give; my lips have fully recovered from your attacks and are in excellent fighting trim to receive you.” He also wrote to her about his dreams that he would meet a lady who would be his “helpmate during life;” and that he was “more and more convinced that you are the one thus foreshadowed.” In January in 1865 Washington resigned from the Army and he and Emily were married in Cold Spring. Washington joined his father, John, in Cincinnati in the spring of 1865 to help him complete the 1,056-ft. span Cincinnati- Covington Bridge, the precursor to the Brooklyn Bridge. In 1867, John sent Washington to Europe to study the use of caissons for building the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge towers. While in John’s hometown of Mühlhausen in Prussia, Emily gave birth to a boy that would be her and Washington’s only child, and they named him John A. Roebling II. In his plans for the 1,600-ft. span Brooklyn Bridge, John specified the use of steel wire for the first time in a major suspension bridge. While he and Washington were inspecting the site for the Brooklyn tower in June 1869, a ferry boat unexpectedly slammed into the slip where they were standing, crushing John’s foot, and he died a horrible death ten days later from tetanus. As Washington recalled years later,
Hardened as I was by the scenes of many a bloody battlefield, these horrors often overcame me. When he finally died one morning at sunrise, I was nearly dead myself from exhaustion… After a week I had become sufficiently composed to take a sober look at my situation. Here I was at the age of 32 put in charge of the most stupendous engineering structure of the age. Te prop on which I had hitherto leaned had fallen; henceforth I
must rely on myself… At first I thought I would succumb, but I had a strong
tower to lean upon, my wife, a woman of infinite tact and wisest council.
Fig. 5: Master Mechanic E. F. Farrington made the first crossing between the Brooklyn Bridge towers on a 7/8 in. wire rope in 1872.
became partially disabled after spending too much time in the caissons for the tower foundations. He and many of the workers suffered, and several died, from what we now know as the bends, or nitrogen narcosis, which results from returning too quickly to the surface from underwater compression. Washington’s disability confined him to his house overlooking the bridge site, and Emily became his chief assistant, carrying drawings and instructions between the Chief Engineer and the assistant engineers at the bridge. Tis continued for years and only a handful of people were able to actually see the Chief Engineer. When some Brooklyn newspapers and Bridge Trustees called for Washington’s replacement, Emily rallied to his defense and convinced the Trustees at an official meeting to keep him as Chief Engineer. Washington had become the head of the John A.
Roebling’s Sons wire and wire rope company in Trenton after his father’s death, but to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, he resigned this position and temporarily sold his stock so that the company could bid on the contracts for the wire for the bridge’s 15 in. cables and for the 1 ¾ in. wire ropes for its 1,520 suspenders and 400 stays. In August 1876, workmen ferried a 7/8 in. wire rope
across the East River to link the two towers for the first time, and master mechanic E. F. Farrington famously made the first crossing between the towers in a boatswain’s chair (Fig. 5). A Brooklyn firm initially won the cable wire contract thanks to connections with the Bridge Trustees, but problems with the quality of the wire led to the Roebling Company becoming the supplier, and it eventually also supplied wire ropes.
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