BLACKSMITH’S BOY AND BRIDGE-BUILDER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2479, 3 May 1909, Page 7

BLACKSMITH’S BOY AND BRIDGE-BUILDER.

■Scotland has many sons she is rightly proud of, but few, if any, of them better justify her pride than Sir William Arrol, whose life struggle and. triumphs typify all that is beet in the Scottish character. It was a bleak, unpromising world on which the great engineer opened his eyes one day nearly seventy years ago in the small village of Bridge of Weir, at a time when Andrew Carnegie was playing with a rattle in a humble cottage in Humfermline. Arrol's parents were poor, so poor that they could afford little schooling lor the future Knight and millionaire, but fortunately for him, little schooling was needed, for on the evidence of his master, “Willie seemed to grasp by instinct lessons which had to be thrashed into other boys.” When he was barely nine years old the child had to turn out of bed in the cold and darkness of winter mornings and make his shivering way to the cotton mill to add a few weekly shillings to the poor family exchequer. But even at this early ago he had his eye on the upper rungs of the ladder he meant to climb some day, and had formulated the motto which bds been his guide through life, “There is no such word as impossible.” He spent four years at the mill before he was apprenticed to a Paisley blacksmith. Then, his apprenticeship over, he found work in a shipbuilding yard, only to be driven from tills humble berth to seek and find employment as a mechanic in a factory

“I was not, however, satisfied with the position,” he says, "and’ went to England thinking to see something, and I worked in Manchester for a few months. . I came hack to Scotland, and worked for a few years in a mechanic’s shop, sometimes as a smith, and sometimes as an engineer or jobbing boilermaker. One thing I made a point to do, and it was this: that, whatever I took in hand, I laid my mind thoroughly to it. It did not matter what it was. Sometimes I was sent to dean the Hues of the boiler instead of repairing it; but I was willing to do anything 1 was told. When I was twenty-two years of age I was working in the shipbuilding yard, and was thinking I was beginning to get on in life. There was a large firm in Glasgow in need of a foreman, and I was recommended for the situation, and got it. I was in it four years and a-half, and during the whole time there never was a single hitch in anything I undertook, although the work I had to da was entirely strange to me. It was there I saw the first girders.” But his eye never once lost sight of the higher rungs on which he meant to secure a footing. In 1868 he decided to cut the cable which moored him to drudgery for others, and to launch his boat on the wide sea of individual enterprise. He had scraped together £BS, and on this small capital ho purchased an engine and a boiler for £43, more than half his total worldly possessions, and set up in business on his own account. “After I was in business,” he says, “some person, thinking I was making a fortune, gave mo intimation that he was going to start opposition next door. I replied that 1 would be glad to give him the whole thing, and I thereupon sold the concern. For some time after I. started business 1, along with one man, commenced work at live o’clock every morning, and went about as if there were enormous contracts to finish.”

Never did many carry a braver heart through a more trying time. For a year and a-half ho never knew from week to week how much longer he could keep a modest roof over the heads of himself and his devoted young wife, whom, with characteristic daring, he had married a few years earlier. “I should not like to tell the story of those years of struggle and privation,” ho has said: “it would bo too painful.” But through it all neither husband nor wife doubted that the sun would shine some day, and that all the days would be bright. For nearly thirty years he had wooed Fortune without getting the faintest smile of encouragement from her. But at last she relented, as she always does to such patience and importunity. The long-de-layed tide turned when tenders were invited for a viaduct across the Clyde; and Arrol, who never missed a chance that came his way, entered the lists against formidable competitors. To his delight his tender was accepted; the sun hgd at last broken through the clouds, and the rejoicing in the humble Arrol household was great. The Clyde viaduct was a splendid piece of work, and the obscure leaped at once into local fame as a skilful and conscientious craftsman, a man who could safely be entrusted with big undertakings. A little later the construction of the South Esk railway bridge at Montrose enhanced his reputation, and resulted in important commissions to build large bridges abroad, especially in Brazil. Everything Arrol touched was a conspicuous success, and the man who a few years earlier had! been thankful to clean boiler Hues for thirty shillings a week was recognised as one of the great engineers of the world, and was on the threshold of a big fortune.

Then came that tragic and ever-memo-rable Sunday evening in December, 1879, when the collapse of the lay Bridge sent a thrill of horror through the civilised world. A storm of unparalleled severity, even for Scotland, swept over the land, leaving ruin and havoc in its train. When the elements were at the height of their raging the train for the North steamed out of Waverley Station, Edinburgh, on its perilous journey. Through the blackness of the tempestuous night it panted bravely northward, the wind shrieking round and buffeting it as if bent on its destruction

It had left the last station on the Fife coast, and its lights were watched twinkling faintly over the storm-tossed waters of the Firth of Tay. A moment later they swooped with meteoric swiftness, and were quenched in the darkness. In vain the, arrival of the train was awaited at Dundee. Minutes of agonised suspense passed, but the train never came. Fearing the worst, the stationmaster, accompanied by a subordinate, proceeded along to the Forfarshire end of the structure. As they went on their perilous journey along the line the nervous tension proved too much for the stationmaster, who fainted. Leaving him in a place of safety, his subordinate, Mr Roberts, continued on his way, hanging on for dear life to the railwork of the bridge when the fury of the gale threatened to batter his ribs against the iron buttresses. Nearing mid-stream the hurricane was so great that he had to crawl on his hands and knees. Still no trace of the missing train ! Suddenly there was a break in the clouds, and the moon, shining through, revealed the terrible fact that the central portion of the bridge had crashed into the river. With this awful secret on his lips this gallant railway servant was the first to convey the intelligence that the bridge was down, and that sign of the train there was none Of the ninety passengers in the train at the time not a soul escaped. The bridge which had proved so tragi'cally unsafe had to be'rebuilt, and it was on the broad shoulders of the clever Scots engineer that the responsibility was placed. Mr Arrol, as he then was, set to work at once to examine the old structure and to prepare plans for rebuilding

it. His first project was to surround the old cast-iron columns with new ones of steel, and to connect these columns securely by strong bracing. But further examination proved that the old foundations were insecure, and it was decided to build an entirely new bridge. Within five years from its commencement a noble bridge, over two miles long, and constructed at a cost of £750,000, spanned the estuary—a structure strong enough to defy the fiercest gale that ever blew. Before this monumental work was completed Air Arrol had been chosen for a still greater task—that of building a bridge across the Forth from the designs of Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, which he undertook for a contract sum of £1,600,000. How gigantic was this task may be gathered from the following details. The bridge consists of two main spans, each nearly a third of a mile long; two of 675 feet each, and fifteen of 168 feet each, the total length of the viaduct being a little over one and a-half mile. In the piers there are 120,000 cubic yards of masonry, and in the superstructure 44,500 tons of steel. The steel-plates, if placed end to end in a line would stretch a distance of 42 miles, and there are 20 acres of surface to be painted. On the work of construction an army of 4800 men was employed daily, and the appliances included 50 steam and other barges, tugs, launches, and boats, 60 steam cranes and winches, 50 hydraulic cranes, 100 hydraulic jacks, 100 hand cranes, 100 drilling machines, and 48 steam engines. This stupendous achievement made the name of Arrol famous throughout the world, and found its merited reward when the ex-piecer in a cotton mill was dubbed a Knight by Queen Victoria and arose “Sir William.” He had reached the zenith of his fame and accomplishment, and his later work, brilliant as it has been, cannot eclipse this supreme effort. Since that time, however, he has constructed bridges and viaducts over the Manchester Ship Canal, and has placed to his credit many another gigantic undertaking any one of which might suffice to make a man famous. As was inevitable, many honors have fallen to Sir William’s lot. He has sat at Westminster as member for South Ayrshire, bringing his shrewd mind to bear on problems of legislation; and he has been made a Doctor of Laws, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a DeputyLieutenant.

And what kind of man is this wonderful son of Scotland, whose long 1 and strenuous life work is now nearing its end? In appearance he is broad-shoul-dered and sturdy, a man evidently of great physical strength and endurance. He has a keen, clever face, with shrewd eyes, which can be kind, and can twinkle with merriment on small provocation; a resolute mouth and jaw which betoken an iron, unyielding will and a power of command. At a casual glance you might put him down as a well-to-do farmer or a country doctor, look more closely, and you will see wat his is the face of a man of exceptional power, fully conscious of its possession. In spite of all his success Sir William still remains as simple, as accessible, and as unspoilt as when, long years ago, he blew the blacksmith's bellows. He never “puts on airs, * and has a great contempt for those who do. He is a loyal friend, and as largehearted as he is big-brained. He is sympathetic and generous, and in him these qualities take a practical and real form to the comfort and advantage of many. Perhaps, however, the quality which has most impressed is that of tolerance. ... Lake all pure-minded men

Sir William is a lover "of the beautiful, and gratifies his taste in this way to a considerable extent. In his house at Seafield, near Ayr, he has gathered a choice collection of pictures and works of art. Though he no longer sits in St. Stephen’s, he is a fine illustration of the truth of the old adage that “it is the busy man who finds leisure to do the most work.”