Victoria Bridge, Montreal, designed by Robert Stephenson

We are most grateful to be able to reproduce here material from Jane Rupert's edition of Letters of a Distinguished Physician from the Royal Tour of the British North American Colonies 1860 written by Henry Wentworth Acland. The whole edition is available on the web by clicking here.

Victoria Bridge, Montreal, designed by Robert Stephenson, informally opened in December 1859. Photograph by William Notman, a recent Scots immigrant hired by the British resident engineer James Hodges to document the construction of the bridge — he became an important Canadian photographer in Montreal.

r Henry Wentworth Acland, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, wrote twelve letters to his beloved wife, Sarah, while accompanying the Prince of Wales as physician during the royal tour. The invitation for the royal visit had been first initiated by the colonial legislature of the united Canadas but soon came to include invitations from the four Atlantic colonies and an unofficial, whirlwind tour of major cities in the United States. The immediate occasion was the official opening of the Victoria Bridge in Montreal, then the world's longest railway bridge. It was hailed as the eighth wonder of the world, not only for its length but for its remarkable engineering mastery over the immense power of ice floes on the St Lawrence River.

As seen in Notman's photograph, limestone piers, built by skilled masons from Britain, support a segment of the tubular superstructure through which smoky, wood-burning locomotives would pass. British contractors, who were then revolutionizing transport as railway builders to the world, had completed this final link in the 1,403 kilometers (872 miles) of track that connected the ice-free Atlantic port of Portland, Maine, to the Canadian border-town of Sarnia, located at the head of the St Clair River and a hub for Chicago's trade in packed meats, flour, and grain. For its promoters in Britain zealously raising capital among investors to finance the bridge, the railway opened the way for the future exploitation and transport of resources and realized a network of year-round, speeded-up, international trade. For ardent advocates of the railway in British North America, such as the united Canada's co-premiers, George-Etienne Cartier and John A. Macdonald, the railway heralded progress and future prosperity within the colonies as it spurred the development of local industries by opening up new markets and by removing serious obstacles to transport in winter.

Victoria Bridge, Montreal, another view. Source: Sights and Shrines: An Illustrated Guide to Montreal (Montreal: A.T. Chapman, 1919), 187.

The Grand Trunk Railway, founded in 1852 in London to build both the bridge and the Montreal-Toronto rail line, had hired the most famous firm of world-wide railway contractors, Peto, Brassey, and Betts. For the design of the bridge, the contractors engaged Robert Stephenson, son of George Stephenson, the inventor in the 1820s of the first railway locomotive. His wrought-iron tubular bridge set on piers had also been used for bridges over the Nile in Egypt and over the Straits of Menai in Wales. Constructing the piers posed a particular challenge. Based on the estimate of the Canadian geologist, William Logan, that in the spring run-off 1,000,000 tons of ice per minute would pass the bridge, twenty-four V-shaped piers designed to minimize the impact of the ice were built by diverting water with temporary coffer dams. For the tubular superstructure, 10,000 pieces of iron precisely perforated with holes for half a million rivets were pre-fabricated in England at a new factory near Liverpool called The Canada Works. On site in Montreal, with almost no adjustments needed they were riveted in place by teams of riveters, including two boys between the ages of eight and twelve, using portable forges and small hammers.

Dr Acland's Letter to His Wife, Sarah

The Bridge - to return - I do believe to be a stupendous work. I had I think underrated its difficulty and had fancied from Charles Liddell's paper on the subject addressed to Macalmore three years ago, read by me, that Stephenson & Peto had too easily lined their nests. But I am in some doubt - Liddell had not been in a Canadian winter - and I fancy that two elements are here not easily computed by a stranger - the actual cost of really good masonry (2 x what it would be in England) 2nd. the Element of Ice pressure which Mr. Blackwell tells me had he not witnessed he could not have believed. He tells me the same of the whole progress of the work. He says that Hodges the resident Engineer deserves a kind of admiration not to be told - for the skill & pertinacity with which he overcame difficulty after difficulty as it arose daily in the working & constructing temporary coffer dams and other apparatus for the permanent work in a stream running 6 knots & with only 6 months working time in the year.

Note As seen here, because of the particular challenges of the Canadian climate, Acland rejected the suggestion of Charles Liddell, chief engineer for several railway enterprises in England and brother of his good friend, the Dean of Christ Church, that the contractors had deliberately inflated costs for their own profit.

Other material relating to Dr Acland

Bibliography

Acland, Henry Wentworth. Introduction and Letter 8: Montreal, in Letters of a Distinguished Physician from the Royal Tour of the British North American Colonies 1860. ed. Jane Rupert, web janerupert.ca

Blackwell, Thomas. Report from the Year 1959. London: Waterlot & Sons, 1859.

Carlos, Ann M., and Frank Lewis. "The Profitability of Early Canadian Railroads: Evidence from the Grand Trunk and Great Western Railway Companies." In Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Legge, Charles. A Glance at the Victoria Bridge and the Men Who Built It, Montreal: John Lovell, 1860.

Logan, Sir W.E. Logan. "On the Packing of the Ice in the River St Lawrence." Canadian Naturalist 3 (1858): 115-22.

Triggs, Stanley, Brian Young, Conrad Graham, and Gilles Lauzon. The Victoria Bridge in Montreal in the Nineteenth Century. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992.

Created 1 July 2023