The floating and raising of the remaining tubes need not be described in detail. The second was floated on the 3rd December, and set in its permanent place on the 7th January, 1850. The others were floated and raised in due course. On the 5th March, Mr. Stephenson put the last rivet in the
last tube, and passed through the completed bridge, accompanied by about a thousand persons, drawn by three locomotives. The bridge was opened for public traffic on the 18th March. The cost of the whole work was £234,450.
The Britannia Bridge is one of the most remarkable monuments of the enterprise and skill of the present century. Robert Stephenson was the master spirit of the undertaking. To him belongs the merit of first seizing the ideal
conception of the structure best adapted to meet the necessities of the case; and of selecting the best men to work out his idea, himself watching, controlling, and testing every result, by independent check and counter-check. And finally, he organised and directed, through his assistants, the vast band of skilled workmen and labourers who were for so many years occupied in carrying his magnificent original conception to a successful practical issue. As he himself said of the work,—“The true and accurate calculation of all the conditions and elements essential to the safety of the bridge had been a source not only of mental but of bodily toil; including, as it did, a combination of abstract thought and well-considered experiment adequate to the magnitude of the project.”
The Britannia Bridge was the result of a vast combination of skill and industry. But for the perfection of our tools and the ability of our mechanics to use them to the greatest advantage; but for the matured powers of the steam-engine; but for the improvements in the iron manufacture, which enabled blooms to be puddled of sizes before deemed impracticable, and plates and bars of immense size to be rolled and forged; but for these, the Britannia Bridge would have been designed in vain. Thus, it was not the product of the genius of the railway engineer alone, but of the collective mechanical genius of the English nation.
