Meanwhile, operations were begun in the direction of an effort to raise the required $5,000,000 by private subscription, but they were not successful, and it was determined to apply to the cities for aid. Application was made to Brooklyn, through the Common Council, for $3,000,000. After many months the incorporators were successful, and later, in 1868, the city of New York subscribed the $1,500,000 required, and the stockholders made up the additional $500,000.
The shares, as has been shown, were fixed at $100 each. The list of the original subscribers, as revealed by the original minute-book still in the possession of the trustees, is very interesting. It is as follows:—
After the subscriptions were all made, several of the subscribers withdrew or failed to make good their promises, whereupon Mr. Kingsley took up their stock and advanced the amount necessary to cover their deficiencies. In fact, he and the firm he represented took in all over $300,000 of the entire $500,000 subscribed by the New York Bridge Company.
John A. Roebling, who had made a brilliant record as a bridge engineer, was chosen for the responsible post of chief engineer. His son, Colonel Washington A. Roebling, was made first assistant engineer. The plans of Roebling having been duly approved by the War Department engineers, the United States government commission,[37] the Secretary of War, and lastly of Congress itself, the company was formally organized in the summer of 1869, with the following directors: Henry C. Murphy, J. S. T. Stranahan, Henry W. Slocum, John W. Lewis, Seymour L. Husted, Demas Barnes, Hugh Smith, William Hunter, Jr., Isaac Van Anden, J. H. Prentice, Alexander McCue, William M. Tweed, Peter B. Sweeny, R. B. Connolly, Grenville T. Jenks.
At this juncture a distressing accident darkened the opening days of the great work. "One morning in June, 1869, Mr. Roebling, in company with Colonel Paine and his other engineering associates, was engaged in running a line across the East River, making the first survey of the site for the Brooklyn foundation. Colonel Paine crossed to the New York side and made the necessary signals, while the chief engineer stood on the Brooklyn side. Just as the operations were approaching completion Mr. Roebling was standing on the rack of one of the ferry slips taking a final observation. At the moment a ferryboat entered the slip and bumped heavily against the timbers, pressing them back to the point where the chief engineer was standing. His foot was caught between the piling and the rack. Colonel Paine, who was on the boat, noticed that his chief started suddenly, and, while he made no outcry, an expression of agony overspread his countenance. The first person to reach the side of the injured man was his son, Colonel Washington A. Roebling, and Colonel Paine quickly followed him. The chief engineer was assisted to a carriage, remarking, as he went, 'Oh, what a folly.' He was quickly driven to his residence on the Heights, and a surgeon was summoned. The surgeon found that the toes of the right foot were terribly crushed. It was at once decided that amputation was necessary. Mr. Roebling rejected the suggestion of an anæsthetic, and personally directed the operations of the surgeon. Nearly all of his toes were taken off at the joints, but he maintained his composure throughout, and endeavored to soothe the apprehensions of his family and friends. During his subsequent illness he preserved intact the use of his mental faculties, exhibiting indomitable will power. Eight days elapsed before fears were entertained of a fatal result. Then the patient complained of a chill, and it was soon discovered that lockjaw had set in. He lived eight days longer, and toward the close suffered the most excruciating agonies, but without complaint, and steadily insisted upon directing the method of his treatment. Even after the muscular contraction precluded the possibility of utterance he wrote with a pencil directions for his attendants. He died of lockjaw just sixteen days after receiving his injuries."
For a time work on the bridge was paralyzed. As soon as possible the directors chose Colonel Roebling to succeed his father, and the great undertaking proceeded.
The mechanical difficulties of the work were enormous. The history of the labors, by which one difficulty after another was overcome, is one of the most absorbing in the annals of engineering enterprise. Huge wooden caissons were sunken on the diving-bell principle to a depth sufficient to assure firm foundations for the piers, which were built over them. The Brooklyn caisson was launched on March 19, 1870; the New York caisson, in September, 1871. The greater difficulties existed on the New York side, where an area of quicksand made it problematical whether bed-rock could ever be reached. The foundation on the New York side was required to be begun at a depth of seventy-eight feet. On the Brooklyn side brick was used under the caisson. On the New York side the space remaining after the lowest point had been reached was filled with concrete.
The most perplexing problem having been solved by the sinking of the foundations, the work advanced steadily. Difficulties with anchorages, materials, contracts, expenditures, and appropriations made the work necessarily slow, and there was a proportionate degree of public impatience. The distant possibility of a completed bridge was the permanent theme of newspaper jest and popular song. But the Brooklyn tower, containing 38,214 yards of masonry, and rising 278 feet above high water, was completed in the spring of 1875, and by the summer of 1876 the New York tower had also been finished.
During this period the pressure on the various city ferries was demonstrating the necessity for some relief to the strain of travel between the two cities. During the year 1869 the Union Ferry Company carried 42,720,000 passengers; the Roosevelt, Grand, and James Slip ferries, 7,028,000 passengers; the Greenpoint, 1,622,250; and the Thirty-fourth Street, 2,250,550. The terms of the new lease of the Union Ferry Company included a provision that the fare between five and half-past seven o'clock, morning and evening, be one cent. It was a few months later that the Brooklyn City Railroad Company reduced its rate of fare to five cents.