Chapter Thirty-Seven
1870
At Sunday dinner, the topic of conversation was the Roebling bridge.
“The Brooklyn caisson will be towed into position tomorrow,” Gaylord announced.
“Will you be there to report it?” Emily asked.
“Indeed, I will. Mr. Greeley is very keen on seeing this bridge built. He’s written several editorials declaring that the cities of New York and Brooklyn must be united, pointing out that Brooklyn is the third-largest city in America.”
“Can I go with you tomorrow?” Peter asked in a voice high-pitched with excitement.
Gaylord looked from Emily to Michael. “Only if your parents agree.”
“Of course he may go,” Emily said, laughing. “I don’t think we could keep him away.”
“But mind,” Michael warned his son, “if Uncle Gaylord should manage to get a ride on the caisson, you will not go with him. Is that understood?”
“But why not?”
“Because I don’t trust the whole enterprise. Mr. Roebling described the caisson as a giant inverted box. The currents in the East River can be fierce. What if it should tip over? The whole thing would sink like a rock.”
“No need to worry on that account,” Gaylord said. “I have no intention of being carried down the East River on, as you say, a floating box. However, I am ashamed to say that in spite of my misgivings, Mr. Roebling, Mr. Kingsley, the project coordinator of the bridge, and several others plan to ride on the caisson”
“I want to work inside the caisson,” Dermot said, with unaccustomed excitement in his voice.
“You will do no such thing,” Emily said, startled by the very idea of her son imprisoned in a box beneath the East River.”
“Why not? You’re always telling me I need to find employment. I hear they’re going to pay more than two dollars a day for the work. That’s more than Da pays his men.”
“They’re paying more because it’s dangerous and dirty work,” Michael pointed out.
“I don’t care. It’s a lot of money,” Dermot muttered.
“When will they begin to lower the caisson, Uncle Gaylord?” Eleanor asked.
“Probably within the next two weeks.”
Emily noticed Gaylord had suddenly gone pale. “What’s the matter, Gaylord? Are you ill?”
The newspaperman swallowed hard. “When the caisson reaches the sediment, the Brooklyn Bridge Company is going to offer a tour of the caisson for the press.”
“That sounds exciting,” Eleanor said.
“Not, my dear, if you are claustrophobic.”
“Oh, goodness,” Emily said. “Is there any way to get out of it?”
“I’m afraid not.” Then he looked sideways at Peter. “Unless, young Peter here would like to take my place.”
“Yes, please. Please.”
“Calm down,” Michael said. “Your Uncle Gaylord is only jesting with you.”
“But I would do it,” Peter said confidently. “What a story it would be!”
Gaylord tilted his wine glass toward the young man. “I’m sure you would make an admirable job of it, Peter. But, alas, if I hope to retain my position of employment, I will have to descend to the depths of the roiling East River.”
“Do you think I might go with you?” Michael asked impulsively.
Emily put her fork down. “Michael, it sounds dangerous down there. Gaylord has to go, but there’s no reason for you to risk your life.”
“This wouldn’t be some kind of lark, Emily. The Eldridge mansion is almost done. It’s time I started looking for new work.”
“And you’d like to work on the bridge?” Eleanor asked, her eyes aglow at the possibilities.
“Why not? I hear there’s plenty of work. Do you think you can get me down there, Gaylord?”
“I don’t see why not. I got you into City Hall posing as a new reporter to view President Lincoln’s body, didn’t I? I don’t see why we can’t use that ruse again.”
On a drizzly April morning, an apprehensive Gaylord reluctantly made his way to the Brooklyn pier. When he got there, Michael and a small crowd of reporters representing the dozens of newspapers in the city were already milling about. Gaylord recognized several of the reporters from the New York Times, the World, the Police Gazette, and the National Intelligencer.
Michael grinned at his friend’s pale and serious demeanor. Usually one with a witty joke, he looked positively funereal.
“Gaylord, you look like you’re on the way to the gallows.”
“I think I’d prefer that to drowning in the East River like a wharf rat.” He turned to a reporter from Harpers Weekly. “What do you think, Harry, are we all going to die down there?”
Harry, a rotund man with bushy muttonchops, laughed. “Not at all, Gaylord. Besides, this is what we get paid to do.”
Gaylord gave him a sickly grin. The man sounded confident, but, although it was only seven in the morning, his breath smelled of whiskey.
“Apparently,” Gaylord whispered to Michael, “my friend Harry has had a couple of drinks to give him Dutch courage.”
A serious looking young man, no more than twenty-one, with a high starched collar and a handlebar mustache stepped out of the construction shed.
“Gentlemen, please gather around.” When they were in a group, he said, “My name is George McNulty. I’m one of the assistant engineers on the project. I will be leading you down to the caisson in groups of five.”
There was a murmur of disappointment. The reporters assumed that Washington Roebling himself would lead the tour. While McNulty explained the procedures to be followed, two assistants handed each man a pair of rubber boots.
“Are these necessary?” Gaylord asked.
The man laughed. “If you want to come out of the caisson with your shoes, I’d advise you to put on the boots.”
McNulty pointed at Michael, Gaylord, and three other reporters. “You five will be first. Please follow me.”
He led them out onto the caisson past swarms of men moving and positioning granite blocks to an opening in the caisson. Gaylord looked down into the dimly lit round hole and swallowed hard.
“This is the airlock. We will climb down the ladder one at a time.” McNulty pointed at Gaylord. “Sir, you will go first.”
With shaky hands, Gaylord went down the ladder into the cast iron airlock lit only by a calcium lamp.
Gaylord was startled to see a man already there. “Who are you?”
“I’m the operator.”
“Is this apparatus safe?”
“Of course. Haven’t I been operatin’ it for a week now?”
The airlock, made of half-inch boilerplate, was six feet in diameter and seven feet high. The confined space made Gaylord’s heart pound in his chest.
When the others were all in the airlock, McNulty pulled down an iron hatch on the ceiling and locked it. The operator turned a valve and compressed air flooded the elevator.
Gaylord stuck his fingers in his ears and winced. “Ow! My ears hurt. Is that normal?”
McNulty nodded. “It is. We don’t begin a descent until the gauge shows that the air pressure inside the airlock is the same as the air pressure inside the caisson.”
When the air pressure was equalized, the operator began the slow descent as the airlock bumped against the sides of the cylinder. When the airlock stopped, the operator opened a hatch in the floor. Immediately, warm, muggy air smelling of rotten eggs, the sea, and unidentified decaying organisms rushed into the capsule.
One by one they climbed down a ladder into the caisson, blinking to adjust to the dim light of calcium lamps. The ceiling was less than ten feet high, making the space all the more claustrophobic. The huge space was partitioned off with wooden walls and wide doorways to permit workers to move from one area to another.
The wall and ceilings were covered with a glistening coat of mud and there were standing puddles of water. All the workers wore rubber boots and Gaylord realized why they were necessary. With every step he took the mud threatened to suck the boots off his feet. When he saw the workers walking on planks over the mud, he did the same.
McNulty led them to the outside wall where the workers were digging out a huge boulder that was preventing the caisson from sinking. “We try to dig out the boulders, but if they’re too big, we use explosives to break the rock into more manageable pieces.”
The men chuckled at the high and thin sound of his voice that down there made him sound like a girl.
“How much progress do you make in a week of digging?” Michael asked.
“About six inches a week.”
“Only six inches?”
“We’re boring down through basalt and trap rock. It’s quite time consuming.”
Gaylord glanced uneasily at the ceiling, which was dripping water, and tried not to think about the tons of granite and water over his head. “Are there any ill-effects from working down here?” he asked the young engineer.
McNulty shrugged. “Some complain of headaches, itchy skin, bloody noses, and slowed heartbeats.” Then grinning, he added, “But there are some who claim they have an increase in appetite.”
“Is it always this hot down here?” Michael asked.
“Yes. Even on the coldest winter day the temperature down here is in the upper eighties.”
Michael looked around at the scores of men shoveling sediment into wheelbarrows. “Mr. McNulty, I don’t understand something. What makes the caisson sink deeper into the sediment?”
“You see it right there,” McNulty said, pointing to a man filling a wheelbarrow with sediment. “Shovel full by shovel full as we remove more and more sediment, the caisson will slowly sink to the bedrock. Now, if there are no further questions, we can go back up.”
Glad to be at the surface again, Gaylord was the first to scramble up the ladder. As soon as they stepped off the pier, Gaylord grabbed Michael’s sleeve. “Let’s find a saloon. I need a drink.”
Michael glanced at his pocket watch. “It’s only after eight.”
“I don’t care. I need a drink.”
They found a saloon a couple of blocks away from the pier. Apparently, Gaylord wasn’t the only one who needed to steady his nerves. Several of the reporters who’d gone down into the caisson were there as well.
Gaylord ordered whiskey, which he promptly knocked down in one gulp. Slapping the bar with his palm, he said, “I’ll have another, bartender.”
Michael grinned at his friend. “Besides being terrified, Gaylord, what did you think?”
“That’s a terrible, terrible place. I’ll never go down there again. I don’t care if Mr. Horace Greeley fires me.”
“It was pretty bad.” All the while they were down there, Michael had been thinking of his son. He wished he could have brought Dermot down there so he could see for himself the terrible working conditions. He was sure the experience would have banished from his mind any thought of working in a caisson.
Gaylord downed his second whiskey and shook his head. “Who would want to work in that ghastly environment?”
“A man who needs money, or a man who needs a job, or—” He suddenly thought of his son. “A man who thinks he has something to prove.”
Gaylord grunted. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. There’s not enough money in the whole wide world to make me work in that ghastly hellhole.”
Two weeks later, Gaylord appeared at the Ranahan’s door. “A terrible thing has happed at the Brooklyn Bridge,” he told Emily.
Seated at the kitchen table, he recounted to Emily and Michael what had happed. “It seems that a fire broke out in the caisson. Washington Roebling went down into the caisson to direct the efforts to extinguish the flames. Best as I can ascertain, working down there in the compressed air for so long caused him to develop what they call ‘caisson disease.’”
“What is that?” Emily asked.
“It’s a mysterious illness that affects men who work down in the caissons. The symptoms are excruciating joint pain, paralysis, convulsions, numbness, speech impediments, and, in some cases, death. Mr. Roebling is partially paralyzed and is confined to bed. They say he will never be able to visit the worksite again.”
“No man should have to work in those conditions,” Michael said, remembering his trip down into the caisson. “What will happen to the bridge now?”
“It seems he’s married to quite a remarkable woman. Although he’ll be confined to his apartment in Columbia Heights, he will continue to direct operations by observing with field glasses and sending messages to the site through his wife, Emily Warren Roebling,”
“She does sound like a remarkable woman,” Emily agreed.
“I don’t believe in such things,” Michael said, “but with John Roebling dead and now his son paralyzed, it makes me wonder if the bridge is cursed.”
Gaylord shook his head. “You’re not the only one to think that, Michael.”