OVER a heady gorge 8,500 miles from home, with a curtain of falling water as their backdrop, they created one of the world’s most famous bridges, and an album of photographs now in Sedgefield shows how their extraordinary work progressed.

Cecil Rhodes, a businessman and a colonialist, dreamed of building a railway the length of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope in the south to Cairo in Egypt in the north,to help the spread ofthe British Empire.

The railway has never been completed, but it was begun early in the 20th Century. One of the first obstacles was the River Zambezi between Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).

Seeing the potential of tourism, Rhodes instructed that it should run as near the Victoria Falls as possible.

A London engineer, George Andrew Hobson, designed a clever bridge that would expand and lift on its giant hinged bearings as the fierce African sun heated the metalwork, and all the world’s construction firms were invited to tender for the contract.

Only two did. Dorman Long, of Middlesbrough, and Cleveland Bridge, of Darlington.

The Darlington company, formed in 1877 by Albert Hill steelworkers, won with a £72,000 bid.

On September 2, 1903, the company’s chief construction engineer, Georges Imbault, the Frenchman who also designed Middlesbrough’s Transporter Bridge, arrived on site.

His first job was to fire a rocket across the 820ft gorge.

Attached to the rocket was a string. Attached to the string was a steel wire. Once the wire was secured, he bravely winched himself across in a bosun’s chair.

The wire was supposed to be 420ft above the Zambezi, but it sagged alarmingly in the middle. Nevertheless, he made it. The job was begun.

BACK in Smithfield Road, Darlington, beside the East Coast Main Line, on what had once been the strawberry patch of Polam Hall, the steelworkers had also made a start.

With plates and angles by the Consett Iron Company, Cleveland Bridge built the 1,868-ton bridge in segments.

On March 5, 1904, they despatched the whole lot by train toMiddlesbroughwhere it was bound for Mozambique on the SS Cromwell.

From Beira, the Mashonaland Railway took it to Bulawayo, and then into the heart of Africa.

It was followed from Darlington by “20 skilled mechanics or erectors, allmen of long service with the firm”

who, for the next year or so, lived in huts on the south bank of the Zambezi.

Reporting their departure, the Darlington and Stockton Times noted that the bridge was going to be the highest in the world.

It was too high for scaffolding and so had to be built on the cantilever principle. The two sides would grow out of the rock, supported by steel hawsers, untiltheymetin the middle.

During the construction, 40,000 tons of materials needed to be transported across the gorge on a Brothers’ electric cableway.

The D&STimes said: “It has just undergone a final and most convincing test at the works in Darlington in the presence of engineering experts from various parts of the country.

“A steel wire rope is suspended between two steel supports, one on each side of the river. An electric conveyor travels along the rope and willtransport at each journey ten tons of material.”

No matter how convincing the test in the Smithfield Road works, what did those Darlington men think in Africa as they clambered onto the swinging, nauseating cableway and ventured out above the Zambezi?

One of the first items they had to take across was the 19- ton locomotive, Jack Tar, made byManningWardle and Company ofLeeds,whichwas to work on the northern bank.

On hand with his camera was Captain Ernest Harry Lindsell Salmon – known as “Nang” to his friends.

He came from a British colonial family and had been in the Matabeleland Relief Force and the Rinderpest Special Police, but while the bridge was taking shape, he was the Rhodesian government’s transport officer.

His job was to ensure that the work was up to scratch, and his granddaughter, Sarah Britton, formerly a special needs teacher at Trimdon Junior School, still has his photograph album.

Alsowatching over the construction was Mukuni, chief of the Leya tribe. He shook his head and said it would never stay up.

The Darlington contingent, aided by 400 African workers, took nine weeks to erect the steel segments.As theyneared the middle, Cleveland Bridge director William Pease, of Mowden Hall,took the British BoerWarhero,LordFrederick Roberts, out on the cableway.

As Memories 104 told, in the middle,he threatened (jokingly)to throw his lordship to his death unless he promised to come to Darlington to unveil the South AfricanWar Memorial in St Cuthbert’s churchyard. He did.

AS the sun set on March 31, 1905, the two sides of the bridge met.

Sadly, there was a one-andthree-quarter inch overlap.

The engineers returned to their huts in disappointment.

Up early next morning, they discovered the wind had changed direction, wafting spray from the falls onto the steel, cooling it after it had been baked by the hot sun. It had contracted so that it was now a snug fit and, at 7am on April 1, it was bolted perfectly together. Then the erectors waited anxiously for the sun to rise to see if the hinged bearings could cope with the expanding metal.

But of course, they could.

In July, the construction was considered strong enough – perhaps it was even certified by our transport officer with the camera – for JackTar tomake its firstjourney across, pulling two wagons.

The bridge was formally opened on September 13, 1905, by Professor George Darwin, the son of Charles.

“It is a feat of engineering which is both as a technical achievement and from its associations not a little remarkable,” said the D&S Times.

“The Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company of Darlington have broken more than one record in its construction.

“It has been built in record time, and itis one ofthe safest bridges in the world, for it rests on solid basalt,the hardest of all rocks, and it will bear the strain of the heaviest existing locomotives.With proper care, it should lastfor a century.”

Nearly 110 years later,it still lasts. It still carries tourist trains, although it needs many millions spent on it to secure its future.

The sceptical chief Mukuni was able to explain how this graceful arch made in Darlington could hang so high above the African river. He said: “It is held up by the finger of the white man’s god.”