The Giant Press That Burst Lifting a Railway Over the Sea

In 1849 a hydraulic press lifting one of the Britannia Bridge's iron tubes over the Menai Strait broke apart, 24 feet up. The tube fell eight or nine inches, not twenty-four feet. A sailor, Owen Parry, was killed. We read the resident engineer's own account, Edwin Clark's two volumes of 1850, to find out why a railway went inside an iron box, and why a stack of planks mattered more than the strongest machine of its day. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:44 Arch vs the Admiralty 4:26 Chains vs a Box 7:29 Scaffold vs Pontoons 9:47 Muscle vs Water 13:20 Presses vs Packing 18:57 Speed vs Safety 21:55 The Price of a Margin SOURCES Edwin Clark, The Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1850), vol. I: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_7D... ; vol. II: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_01... Sir F. B. Head, High-Ways and Dry-Ways; or, the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849): https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9C... William Fairbairn, An Account of the Construction of the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849): https://archive.org/details/anaccount... R. Stephenson, General Description of the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849): https://archive.org/details/generalde... The Illustrated London News, 30 June and 25 August 1849: https://archive.org/details/sim_illus... G. D. Dempsey, Tubular and Other Iron Girder Bridges (1850): https://archive.org/details/tubularan... Cadw listed-building record, the Britannia Bridge memorial, St Mary's, Llanfairpwll; Grace's Guide, Britannia Bridge IMAGES (all public domain or CC0; each is credited on screen; full list in the pinned comment) The Illustrated London News (1848–49); Edwin Clark (1850), Sir F. B. Head (1849) and Internet Archive scans; Library of Congress; Wikimedia Commons (National Library of Wales, George Hawkins lithographs, portraits) Music: "Singularity" and "False Vacuum Decay" by The Grey Room / Density & Time (YouTube Audio Library; no attribution required) ABOUT THIS VIDEO Archival images are public domain or used under the licences listed above. Builder's Plate tells the stories of the forgotten machines, materials, methods and people that built the modern world, from the original drawings, patents and reports. Spotted an error? Leave a comment with a source and we will pin the correction. #BritanniaBridge #EngineeringHistory #VictorianEngineering